


We Dance In The Moonlight With Stars As Our Spotlights

by lilies_in_a_vase



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abusive Neil Hargrove, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Attempted Sexual Assault, Awesome Robin Buckley, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Lives, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington - Freeform, Blood, Breakup, Canonical Child Abuse, Chapter 2 updated tags:, Chapter 3 updated tags:, Chapter 4 updated tags:, Child Abuse, Coming Out, Crying Billy Hargrove, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: s03e04 The Sauna Test, F/F, Friendship, Gay Billy Hargrove, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Good Friend Robin Buckley, Hospitals, How Do I Tag, Hurt Billy Hargrove, I will add tags for each chapter, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Lesbian Robin Buckley, M/M, Making Up, Male-Female Friendship, Max cares about Billy, Neil Hargrove's A+ Parenting, Nightmares, POV Robin Buckley, Pre-Harringrove, Protective Billy Hargrove, Protective Robin Buckley, Robin & Billy are literary nerds, Robin Buckley & Billy Hargrove Friendship, Robin Buckley Needs a Hug, Robin Buckley has a motorcycle, Robin Buckley plays the clarinet, Robin/Original Female character - Freeform, Russians, Scars, Scoops Troop, Season 3, Sick Billy Hargrove, Sick Robin Buckley, Sleepovers, Vomiting, gay clubs, high school parties, no beta we die like men, panic attacks?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27631412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilies_in_a_vase/pseuds/lilies_in_a_vase
Summary: Somehow, through what must be a combination of fate and coincidence, Robin finds herself becoming best friends with Billy Hargrove during the last semester of Junior year.
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Billy Hargrove
Comments: 29
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never written a chaptered fic before, but this was getting too damn long so it had to be broken up into several parts. I hope you guys will enjoy it! I’ve always thought Billy and Robin could have a killer friendship, so, well, here’s my attempt at writing it! 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING   
> Neil’s an abusive arse, but as this is from Robin’s POV the abuse is never depicted. The aftermath is shown, and it is referenced.   
> There is also a part where a policeman takes advantage of Billy, although the actual sexual event (which is never outright stated what it is) is not depicted. What happens before, and immediately after, is. 
> 
> I had a really hard time with the tags on this one, and the rating, so in case anyone thinks I should add/change something, please let me know! 
> 
> Disclaimer:   
> I don’t own “Stranger Things”, and they are quoting “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, “Anna Karenina” by Lev Tolstoy, and “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen. Heart is also an actual band, although they didn’t release an album in ‘85.

Band practice lets out at 5pm, on Thursdays. Robin’s bandmates stay back to talk to each other, or go off towards their lockers, but Robin brought all her stuff to the rehearsal room so she could leave quickly. It’s her dad’s birthday, and Robin wants to be home before him to prepare dinner. 

She cleans her clarinet and puts it away in its case, before grabbing her bag and hurrying out of the room, her whole demeanour saying  _ ‘don’t stop me, don’t talk to me, I don’t have the time’ _ and so she gets out of there in record time. 

There’s a door out through the back of the school that is locked from the outside and that almost no one uses, but it’s closer to home and it’s just a few rooms from their rehearsal room, so Robin parked her bike on that side this morning.

She is not expecting for someone to be sitting against the wall a few feet away from the tiny little bush next to the door when she rushes out. 

She is not expecting said person to be the most popular boy in the whole school. Billy Hargrove came to Hawkins six months ago in a blue Camaro, carrying an air of superiority and with the smell of the ocean still clinging to his skin. Robin has never really been interested in the ongoings of the popular crowd, since she wasn’t part of it and didn’t particularly wish to be. Nevertheless, Hawkins High is a small school, and it would probably be harder to avoid hearing about the popular people’s lives compared to actually seeking it out. 

Still, Robin’s knowledge of Billy Hargrove can be summed up to a list of seven things. 

  1. He moved to Hawkins from California right before Junior year began. 
  2. He drives a blue Camaro, and has no respect for speed limits. 
  3. He has a red haired younger sister. 
  4. He’s got a good tolerance for alcohol. 
  5. He’s a bit of a player, and an asshole. 
  6. He got in a fight with Harrington last term, for unknown reasons. They both came to school with bruised faces. Not that Robin felt particularly bad for Harrington, because from what she’s heard he’s also a bit of a douchebag, so who gives a shit. May the arseholes punch each other to their hearts content. 
  7. He takes English with Robin. 



She’s not certain what makes her stop, but she does, and turns around to look at him. “Billy?”

He slowly raises his head to look up at her, as though it’s too heavy for his neck. He’s got a steadily developing black eye, she notices, and a split lip. She wonders what poor fucker decided it would be a good idea to get into a fight with Billy Hargrove. 

“Buckley,” he says and gives her a grin, and it’s unnerving, because there’s blood all over his teeth. Like a shark. 

“You know my name?” 

“We have English together.” Robin’s going to have to amend her list.  _ ‘7. He takes English with Robin. And he knows her name.’ _

He nodstowards her helmet. “You the one who drives the motorcycle?”

“Yeah.” She’s the  _ only _ one at the whole school with a motorcycle. People usually seem shocked at that, but Robin notes that Billy just seems impressed. 

“God damn, Buckley. Nice.” 

Robin smiles despite herself. “Yeah.” They stand there, neither one speaking, just looking at each other, and it’s awkward. Robin with her school bag, and clarinet case,and motorcycle helmet, and Billy with his curled up body, and black eye, and split lip. “... I have to go now.”

He lifts up a hand and gives her a little wave. “Bye,” he says and wiggles his fingers. Robin gets the feeling he’s mocking her, so she doesn’t say anything back, just turns on her heel and rushes of to her bike. 

She notices the Camaro parked close by, underneath a tree, and Robin is pretty sure that isn’t actually a parking spot, but she doesn’t say anything. 

— 

Robin’s dad owns a restaurant. The only French restaurant in all of Hawkins. He owns it, and he’s a chef there. It’s French because Robin’s grandma is French. Her grandpa is American, so they had to cooperate a little on the names. That’s why Robin’s dad is named Pierre and her aunt is named Patricia. 

She finishes the cake and cleaning up afterwards about fifteen minutes before her dad comes home. 

Her dad is tall, so tall he has to duck when he gets in through the front door. They live in a flat, Robin and her dad, with a corridor shaped like an ‘L’. The front door is at the end of the small line, and opposite it is the door to the bathroom. The long corridor has the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other, with Robin’s bedroom next to it and Pierre’s beside the kitchen. 

He brings the smell of pizza with him as he steps into the kitchen and places the cartons on the counter. 

“Happy birthday, dad!” Robin says and smiles when he leans down to kiss the top of her head. 

“Thanks, Robbie.” He leaves to take off his coat and wash his hands, and Robin gets out drinks from the fridge. They always eat pizza for her dad’s birthday. He’s always told her he gets tired of making ‘fancy food’ all day, every day, so he prefers something simpler for his birthday. 

Once he gets back they take their food to living room to watch his favourite movie while they eat. 

—

Robin doesn’t think about Billy Hargrove for a week. She’s strangely proud of that fact. She’s pretty sure most girls at Hawkins High think about him at least every other day, and Robin has actually had a conversation, weird and stilted as it was, with him. And yet, nope. No Billy Hargrove thoughts for a whole week. 

On the other hand, that might be saying more about Billy than it does about her. Because Billy’s kind of the person that won’t  _ let _ you not think about him for long periods of time. He’s loud, and volatile, and honestly, seems a little too obsessed with attention.

It’s a Wednesday, or perhaps Thursday, it might be past midnight by now, and Robin is speeding down the centre of Hawkins on her motorcycle. It’s the part where there are no houses, just shops and office buildings, and the middle and high schools, so there’s no one here for Robin to disturb. 

She’s done this, every once in a while, when everything gets to be too much. Today, her teacher had been a homophobic arsehole, and Robin had cried into her dad’s shoulder once he’d gotten home and asked her why she looked so upset. He’s the only one who knows she’s a lesbian, and he loves and accepts her, and Robin is so thankful that she has a safe space to come home to. But sometimes... sometimes that isn’t enough. Sometimes she needs to get out. 

And so she jumps on her bike and goes out into the night, because she needs to know that there is more out there. There is a whole world out there where she might find the love and acceptance that Hawkins lacks, and it’s freeing to feel the air hit her as she speeds down empty, silent streets. 

Hawkins is asleep, and on nights like these it almost seems like a ghost town, like Robin is the only one left alive. She opens her mouth and screams, no words, just sound, just to remind herself that she’s real. Here she can make as much noise as she wants. 

She notices the Camaro the second time she passes past the high school. 

Robin’s calmed down enough by then that the sight makes her frown by how out of place it is. It’s parked in the same spot it was last time -  ~~ the first time ~~ \- she talked to Billy. 

Robin parks her bike over at the main parking lot and walks around the corner to where she saw the Camaro.

It’s eerily quiet, and there’s no light coming from the car. For a second, Robin humours the thought that Billy’s just left his car there, but it doesn’t make much sense because he has to get to school in the morning somehow. 

“Billy?” she calls, in an attempt not to scare him if he’s just sitting in his car smoking or something, only to glance into his rear view mirror to see a dark shape on its way to him. Robin has no intentions of being run over. Because she imagines that’s what Billy would do. Run her over. 

Billy’s not sitting in his car smoking, it turns out. In fact, at first she doesn’t really see him at all, until she notices something moving in the backseat. She can just barely make out his legs and the beginning of his upper body, mostly because he’s quite obviously shivering. 

His knees have been pulled up to his chest, and he’s curled up underneath his leather jacket. 

Robin feels like she’s seen something which she was never meant to see. She turns on her heel and walks back to her bike and drives home. 

—

By lunch, the theories have reached Robin’s ears, and they’ve gotten so elaborate and outlandish that Robin actually burst out laughing when she heard two guys speculating by the lockers.

_ ‘Shit, have you seen Hargrove’s face? What the fuck happened to him?’ _

_‘I heard Hargrove got in a fight. Again.’_

_ ‘Apparently he went to a bar and got drunk and got into a fight.’ _

_‘I saw him drive by last night when I was going to bed. He must’ve been out all night.’_

_ ‘Do you think I could ask him for where he got his fake ID? The guy must be good.’ _

_ ‘He probably knows lots of celebrities. I heard he went partying with them in Los Angeles, they probably invited him out to a bar.’  _

_ ‘I heard he killed someone; that’s why they moved here. Maybe he tried to do it again.’  _

_ ‘No dude, I’m telling you, he’s got ties to gang members in California!’  _

Robin is fairly certain she goes to a school of morons. She’s half expecting them to start spewing some bullshit about aliens or Russians any day now. 

Although she’s heard about Billy all morning, she doesn’t see him until she’s well into her lunch when he steps into the Cafeteria.

He’s got a black eye. And bruises. A split lip. 

Robin does wonder where he got them from. She thinks of him last night, curled up in his car and shivering, and wonders why he didn’t go home. 

—

Robin’s out getting groceries later that day. They need new milk, and bread, and cheese and there’s a deal on frozen chicken breast, so Robin gets that as well. 

She’s finished putting what she came here to get in her basket, ready to head to checkout, when she sees them. Checkered blankets, soft and warm, and at half the original price. Robin doesn’t stop to examine her thought process, she just grabs one and heads towards the cashier to pay. 

It’s dark when she comes out of the shop, the way it gets on February evenings. As she drives past the high school, she lets her eyes sweep over the parking lot, and  _ there it is. _ A blue Camaro, hidden under the shade of a tree. 

She gets home and puts the groceries away, and then Robin sits down at her desk and rips out a piece of paper from her notebook. Four little words and a tiny drawing underneath, and then Robin goes to bed.

She wakes up early next morning, so early down has just broken, and she puts the blanket in a plastic bag and tapes her note on top. 

She’s quiet so as to not wake her dad, and when she gets to school she finds the Camaro in the exact same place it’s been for the last two nights. Billy’s inside, still shivering underneath his jacket, and Robin leaves her offering on top of the hood. She glances at her note one last time before turning away and driving back home to eat breakfast. 

_ ‘Thought you looked cold’ _

And drawn underneath it, a robin bird on a branch. 

—

Billy’s eyes land on her that Friday, while he’s queuing with Tommy and Carol, and Robin’s eating a sandwich with Jess and Mark from band, and there’s something searching in his gaze. 

Robin meets it head on. 

He nods to her, once. 

—

Robin’s not expecting to meet Billy Hargrove so soon after that, but as it so happens, it’s a little over a week later and she’s driving home when she comes across Billy’s car parked to the side of the road by the forest’s edge.

Robin parks her bike behind his car, and gets off. Billy’s in the driver seat, one hand pressed against his bleeding nose, the other one in front of him, palm up. He’s staring at it, at the blood smears on his clothes, and Robin thinks he’s cursing. 

She knocks on the window, and he jumps, slightly, but rolls it down once he sees her. 

“The fuck you doing here, Buckley?” 

Robin shrugs. “I live over there,” she says, and points towards the apartment complexes off to the side in front of them. She can even see her building between the trees. 

He just raises his eyebrows in response. 

“Cold water, not hot,” Robin then says, and he looks at her like she’s grown a second head. 

“I fucking know not to use hot water,” Billy says, and she thinks he attempts a sneer, but it’s hard to see under all the blood and the hand he’s still holding against his nose. There’s an edge to his voice that Robin can’t figure out the meaning of. 

“Great, then. Do you also know what to do if that doesn’t work?” 

He doesn’t answer, which Robin thinks is answer enough. 

“Lemon juice. Or mix baking soda with water, and let it sit for a while on the stains, and then wash it. Or use salt, if you don’t have anything else.” 

Now he’s wrinkling his brows, and looking kind of impressed. “How the fuck do you know all of that?”

_I have a working vagina. And it’s a fucking pain. _ She doesn’t say that, though. Instead she just raises her eyebrows and gives him A Look. “Let’s just say I’ve had to clean blood out of clothing more than once.” 

Comprehension seems to dawn on him, and his mouth twists. “Disgusting, Buckley.” 

Robin just laughs and starts to walk back to her bike. “You’re welcome!” she shouts over her shoulder. “And hey, Billy? You shouldn’t sleep in your car. You’ll get back pain.” 

—

It’s almost ten o’clock in the evening when the intercom buzzes. The restaurant closes at ten on weekdays, so her dad will probably be home around eleven.

Robin had been busy brushing her teeth, about to go to bed and read a little before she has to sleep, but now she just spits into the sink and walks out to the hallway. 

“Hello?” 

_ “It’s Billy,” _ the voice on the other end says. He sounds weird, strange, almost slurring his words, but Robin still recognises his voice. She stands there blinking, trying to figure out what the fuck Billy Hargrove is doing outside her building. 

“Okay...?” 

_ “Yeah, look, I... I need...” _ He sighs, and tries again.  _ “Can I-?” _

“Are you drunk?” she interrupts him. 

_ “... I- No. Maybe?” _ He lets out a breath, but it sounds wrong. It’s shaky, and rattling, and for some inexplicit reason Robin feels worried. 

“Yeah, give me a second. I’ll come down. Don’t go,” she adds just before hanging up and putting on shoes and rushing down the stairs. She doesn’t bother locking the door behind her. Doesn’t care that she’s only dressed in pyjamas. 

She finds Billy leaning against her motorcycle, his car parked so it’s taking up two parking spots. The wind carries the stench of vomit with it. The night air is chilly through the thin fabric of her pyjama shirt, and Robin hugs herself and tucks her arms under her armpits. Billy’s temple’s bleeding, and Robin can tell he’s favouring his right side as he walks up to her. She’s already decided she’s going to help him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, shocking her. “I... I shouldn’t have come here.” 

“But you did.” 

“We’re... We’re not friends.” 

“And yet you decided to stop here, and to buzz on my door, instead of going to any of your actual friends. You’re going to get blood on your clothes. Again. Come on.” She wonders if he’d gone around the buildings, looking for the one with her name. Wonders why he’d spent time and energy doing that, instead of going to Tommy’s place. Or Carol’s. Or any of the other popular people he hangs out with. 

She doesn’t ask him, though. Because right now, Robin can tell he wouldn’t answer, would probably get in his car and crash it somewhere and Robin doesn’t want that on her conscience. Suddenly, it seems very important to get Billy up to her flat, where Robin knows he’ll be safe. Robin doesn’t know why she cares. But it must mean something, that he came to her. 

He takes a step towards her, and stumbles, and Robin hurries forward and takes hold of his arm to steady him. 

It’s the closest they’ve been to each other, standing up, she realises. Billy seems so big and intimidating from afar, but he’s just a few centimetres taller than her. 

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the hospital?” 

He shakes his head, winces, and sighs. “No hospital,” he whispers. 

Robin nods, and puts the arm she’s holding around her shoulders. Together, they walk inside. Robin lives on the fourth floor, and she doubts Billy’s up for the stairs, so she presses the button for the lift. 

It’s quiet the way up. Robin doesn’t ask him if he’s been in a fight. She quickly figured out he hasn’t, at least not in one where he’d fought the way she knows he can. There are no bruised or split knuckles. There’s just a bloody temple, and a pained body, and unsteady feet and alcohol on his breath. 

Robin leads him into the flat, and then into the bathroom, where she drops him off on the closed toilet lid. She gets out a clean towel and lets it run under the water, before crouching down beside Billy and trying to get eye contact. During the time it took them to get from outside to here, he seems to have gotten even more out of it. 

“Billy? I’m going to clean your face, okay?” 

He looks at her, and nods minutely. Robin nods back, and reaches up to clean the blood of his temple. His eyes follow her every move. Once she’s satisfied it’s clean, and isn’t serious enough he’d need stitches, she goes over and gets plasters. She has to use two, to cover all of it. 

She lets her gaze move down towards his chest then, before looking back up at him. 

“Is there anything beneath your clothes I need to see? And don’t say ‘no’ just because you don’t want me to see. Is there anything I  _ need _ to look at?” 

“No,” he says softly. Robin didn’t know Billy could be this quiet. 

“Okay. I’ll get you one of my dad’s shirts, wait here.”

Robin leaves him there, and goes into her dad’s bedroom to look through his closet for one of those dark cotton t-shirts and sweatpants he likes sleeping in. Once she’s found what she’s looking for, she goes back and hands it to Billy, closing the door to the bathroom behind her. 

She stops by the closet in the hallway, and gets out all the extra pillows and blankets they own, before walking into her bedroom and spreading them out on the thick carpet beside her bed. Billy finds her right as she’s finished putting it together, a mixing bowl from the kitchen besides his makeshift bed on Robin’s bedroom floor. 

Robin glances over at him while climbing into her own bed. The sweatpants are a little long on him, so they’re bunched up around his ankles. 

“Turn the light off,” she tells him and settles into bed, her back to him. 

The rooms goes dark, and Robin hears him lie down. She lies awake for a couple minutes, staring into the wall, and it’s so quiet she thinks he’s fallen asleep. She’s close to herself. 

But then she hears sniffling, and realises Billy Hargrove, who came to Robin for shelter, lying hurt on the mountain of blankets and pillows Robin assembled, is crying. 

She figures he must think she’s asleep, that there’s no chance he’d willingly let her hear this, so she closes her eyes and doesn’t say anything. 

She falls asleep to the sound of his quiet tears. 

— 

Robin’s still half asleep when she pads into the kitchen in her slippers the next day. The oven’s on, and the smell is as heavenly as every time her dad decides to bake. Billy’s still asleep in her room, curled around a pillow. She finds her dad in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He’s put the water on so she can get her morning cup of tea. 

“Care to tell me why there’s a teenage boy with our plasters on sleeping on your bedroom floor?” he asks without looking up while she’s in the middle of putting her teabag in the mug. Had this been just a few years ago, she’s certain his tone would have been quite different asking that. Now, it just sounds slightly amused and very perplexed. 

“Shit,” Robin says, pausing in her movement to turn around and look at him. “Yeah... He’s my classmate.” 

Pierre looks up at her, and raises his eyebrows “You’re going to have to elaborate a bit more than that for me to understand, honey.” 

“His name’s Billy Hargrove?” 

“That new family that moved in from California? I think I’ve had his parents on date nights. What’s he doing here?” 

Robin sighs, plops the teabag in the water and lifts her mug with both hands. “He just showed up, last night! And he was drunk and hurt and I just, I didn’t want to leave him like that. Like, he could’ve crashed his car, or something.”

“Why didn’t you just drive him home?” 

It’s a good question. One Robin’s been struggling to answer even to herself. So she goes with logic. “And how’d I get home, then? We would’ve had to take his car, he was so out of it he might’ve fallen off my bike. And I don’t actually know where he lives.” 

Pierre chuckles. “Okay, Robbie, I understand. Morning, Billy.” 

Robin turns around to look over her shoulder. Billy stands frozen in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at her dad. He looks so much younger, like he’s been stripped off his armour, standing there with her dad’s sweatpants bunched up at the ankles, curls messy and Robin’s two plasters stuck to his forehead. She sees him swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“Good morning, sir.” 

Robin’s dad only smiles at him, and sticks out his hand. “Pierre Buckley,” he says, and Robin watches with raised eyebrows as Billy walks past her to shake her dad’s hand. “My clothes are a little big on you, huh?” 

“I’ll change,” Billy says, immediately. 

“No, no, don’t worry,” her dad laughs. “I took the liberty to toss your clothes in the washer though, when I got home last night. I’m not certain they’re dry yet, so stay in that at least until after breakfast.” 

“Thank you, but... I should be going.” That sounds more like Billy. She’d been shocked at how polite he was being. 

“No, no, I insist. I made croissants. They should be done in about a minute or so. Stay.” 

And so Robin finds herself eating breakfast with Billy Hargrove and her dad. It’s a little awkward, because Billy seems confusingly nervous, while her dad seems to have made it his mission to act like he doesn’t notice it. But by the end of it, Billy’s actually laughing at her dad’s shitty jokes. And not that loud laughter she’s heard in the cafeteria or through the halls, the one that sounds like he wants everyone to know he’s having a great time and they’re too low on the social ladder to be let in on the joke. This laughter sounds more genuine, like he actually thinks her dad is funny. Robin doesn’t understand him. 

—

“Buckley!” 

Robin’s standing by the lockers after lunch on Monday, talking to Jenny from band, when Billy’s voice calls out to her. 

“Party on Friday!”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t turn around to look at him, instead she lifts one hand in the vague direction his voice came from, and gives him the finger over her shoulder. She must’ve aimed the right way, because a second later she hears loud laughter, and recognises Billy’s among it. 

She’s about to continue her conversation, but Jenny looks wide eyed up at her, mouth slack. 

“Why is Billy Hargrove asking you to come to a party?” 

Robin shrugs. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Robin! Even I know that when the most popular boy in school asks you to go to a party, you go to the party!” 

“Jen, I’m not interested in-“ 

She’s interrupted when Billy comes over. He goes to stand behind Jenny, one arm his arm against the locker and leaning towards the side. Jenny turns around to look at him, and Robin watches as he grins at her. He’s got a cigarette sticking out between his lips, unlit. It’s such a cliché Robin can’t help but roll her eyes. It’s not like Jenny can see her, anyway, with her back to her. 

Billy can, however. His eyes flick up to hers, and his grin gets a little wider, before moving back to Jenny. He gestures with his head for her to leave, and Jenny doesn’t hesitate before going. Robin wonders if she should try to get some new friends with more spine.

“What do you want, Hargrove?” Robin sighs. Billy’s still grinning at her. She wonders if he thinks the cigarette is making him look cool. Robin mostly thinks he looks silly. 

“For you to come to the party at Chris’ place on Friday.” 

“I don’t have anything to wear.” Robin grimaces. “It’s not really my scene.” 

“We’ll go get you something, then,” Billy says, immediately. 

Robin raises her eyebrows. “You? You want to go  _ shopping _ with me?” 

“If it’ll make you go, then yeah.” 

Robin smirks. “Great. I’ll pick you up at four tomorrow.” And she shoves herself away from him and goes to class. 

— 

Robin’s expecting Billy to corner her the next day, protest about him being picked up instead of it being the other way around, but he doesn’t, and after school Robin rides home and drops her school bag off. She checks the piece of paper her dad made Billy write his address down on, and gets back on her bike.

Billy’s waiting outside the house on Cherry Lane, and Robin throws her extra helmet at him. He catches it like he would’ve a basketball. 

“Have you ever been on one of these before?” she asks, and gestures at her motorcycle. 

“Yeah,” Billy answers, but Robin sees the way his eyes shift between excitement and apprehension when he looks at it. 

She laughs. “No, you fucking haven’t. Hold on to my waist and you’ll be fine.” She takes a second to make sure Billy’s got the helmet on correctly, before swinging her leg over and sitting down. 

Billy hops on behind her, and puts his arms around her waist before folding his hands in height with her bellybutton. She’s had people on with her before, but those have always been friends. She isn’t certain what Billy is. 

She drives them away from the centre of town, towards a secluded little corner of Hawkins. She parks the bike and waits for him to get off before she follows, pulling off her helmet and shaking her hair out. 

Billy takes his own off, and drags a hand through his curls, looking around with wide eyes. 

Robin laughs. “Relax, I doubt any of your friends even know about this place, much less have ever set foot in it.” 

He looks like he wants to protest, but seems to decide against it. Then he opens his mouth again, but Robin gets the distinct feeling he isn’t about to say what he’d first thought to. 

“I’m more concerned if you’ve taken me here to murder me.” 

Robin laughs. “Hm, yeah, well. That one’s not off the table yet.” 

Billy shoves at her shoulder, but it’s gentle, and he’s smiling. They’re almost the same height, Billy just a little taller than her. If she put on heels they’d probably be exactly the same. 

She leads the way into the thrift store, with its rows of second hand and vintage clothing, and starts looking around. The bell jingles as Billy steps in behind her. 

They spend a couple minutes looking around in silence, before Billy comes over and taps her on the shoulder. Robin turns around to find him grinning toothily. It’s the same shark like smile as before, just without the blood. He still looks like a predator. 

He holds up a tiny little mini skirt and Robin chokes on a laugh. “What about this?” Billy asks. 

She raises her eyebrows. “You’re kidding me, right? It’s fucking cold out.” 

Billy shrugs, and goes away to - hopefully - put it back where he found it. A little while later, he calls her to him again. 

“This, then?” he says, and holds up the hanger with his new finding. 

“A leather jacket?” She narrows her eyes. “Don’t you have a leather jacket?” 

“They’re nice.” They are. Especially this one. Robin’s pretty certain it fit her perfectly, and it’s her style as well. 

“Can’t argue with that.” 

She buys the jacket. 

—

It’s really not her scene. Robin holds up her camera, and takes a couple of photos of the dancing bodies around her, of the alcohol lined up on the counter in the kitchen. Maybe she’ll join the school paper, or send in an anonymous article.  _ ‘The Outsider’s Observations of The Popular Clique’s World of Partying’ _ , or something. 

“You that girl with a boy name?” 

Robin turns to glance at her side. There’s a girl there, chewing bubblegum loudly and looking at Robin like she’s a cat and Robin’s her new toy. She’s got a red-brown bob of hair, and Robin must be at least eight inches taller than her.  _ Carol _ , her mind supplies. 

Robin laughs. She can’t be serious. “Robin’s not just a male name.” 

“I’ve never met another girl with that name.” She glances at Robin’s camera with disdain. Robin remembers that this is the girl who used to be Steve Harrington’s friend, and that she heard something about Harrington smashing Jonathan Byers camera.

“Well. Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’m sure there’s plenty of things you’ve never seen, but they still exist despite it.” 

Carol doesn’t answer, just looks up at Robin with a small frown. “He’s not going to stay with you, you realise that, right?” 

“What?” 

“Billy,” she says, with a tone that indicates she thinks Robin’s an idiot. Robin’s getting the feeling Carol sees her as nothing more than a bit of dirt she’d like to wipe of her shoe. “You might be something fun for him right now, but it won’t stay like that. He’ll throw you to the side before the month is over.” Robin’s pretty certain Carol has a boyfriend, and yet she’s also pretty certain she’s able to detect a note of jealousy in her tone.

“I’m not dating Billy.” 

Carol laughs. “No, of course not. No one  _ dates _ Billy.” 

“Yeah, well, we aren’t fucking either, if that’s what you think is going on.” 

“Sure you aren’t.” 

Robin doesn’t have time to answer, because right then Billy’s voice comes over the music. “Rob!” 

“Have fun!” Carol shouts after her as Robin starts walking towards Billy on the other side of the room.

“You know,” she tells Billy once she gets to him. “I don’t like you making me come here and then abandoning me, you asshole.” 

Billy looks almost hurt. “But I’m keg king.” 

“Billy, I don’t give a shit.” 

He purses his lips at that, and takes her hand and drags her out of the room, through the living room and the pounding music from the makeshift dance floor in there, until they get out into the backyard. The music’s still loud, but it’s more bare able outside. Robin hadn’t realised how want she’d gotten until she gets out and feels the cold breeze hit her face and start to cool her down. 

Billy lets go of her hand, and Robin glares at him. “You know what, I take it back. I do care. You’re my ride home, and I’m not dying because you’re too drunk to drive.” 

“I’m not,” he says, and sounds a bit like a child. “Look.” And he proceeds to demonstrate how well he can walk in a straight line in front of her. He stumbles twice and sways throughout. 

Robin sighs. “Billy. Why did you bring me here?” 

“I thought you’d have fun.” 

“Well I didn’t. I’m not. I’m not having fun.”

Billy purses his lips. “Don’t you like dancing?” 

“Not like this. The music’s too loud, and it’s shit in general, by the way, and everyone smells of beer and sweat. I don’t even know anyone here!” 

“You know me.” 

“Barely,” Robin says, but then thinks about the fact that he came to her in his time of need, instead of any of the people inside the house behind them. “And you left me. Carol came and made fun of my name.” 

Billy starts laughing at that, just a little, a quiet giggle, and it’s so out of character that Robin joins in. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and takes her hands in each of his. Robin wonders what the fuck he’s about to do now. Wonders why the fuck she’s letting him, instead of pulling away and stalking over to the Camaro to wait for him to finish partying. 

But Billy takes her hands, and starts swaying their arms back and forth. He lets go of one of her hands, and twirls her around. Robin laughs. 

“Is this better?” 

“Yeah,” she nods. “Yeah, it’s better.” 

They stay out there for a little while longer, doing their silly imitation of dancing, before it gets too cold to stay outside. Robin’s expecting Billy to go back into the house, but instead he shoves his hands into his pockets and goes around the house to the Camaro. 

Robin forces him to let her drive, and insists on him staying at her place again. Her dad’s asleep when they get up to her flat, so they stay quiet as Robin gives him the blankets and pillows from last time. She tells him to make himself comfortable while she goes to change and brush her teeth in the bathroom. 

Billy’s asleep when she comes back, and gone before she wakes up. 

—

On Monday the next week, Billy puts his arm around her shoulders and walks with her down the hallways of Hawkins High, and Robin wonders if he cares about all the people staring. 

Evidently not, because he keeps doing it.

—

“They’re assholes,” Robin informs him, and Billy nods in agreement. 

They’re at the diner, and Robin’s got a plate piled high with fries which she keeps dipping into her ice cream, internally laughing every time Billy sends her a look of disgust. He’s got a piece of pie, and a coffee. 

“Yeah,” he says. “So am I. But you’re not.” 

Robin arches an eyebrow and he smirks back at her. 

“I mean it, though,” she says. “I’m not going to hang out with them. And you’re just hanging around them to fit in and be popular.” 

Billy tilts his head to the side. “Yeah, but so are you,” he says. “You can’t convince me you actually like hanging out with the lot you do. You’re just doing it because it’s expected of you, because they’re your band mates and it’s too much of a bother to try to hang with anyone else.”

Robin swallows, doesn’t like how true that is. “Well, maybe the two of us should hang, then. You want to be my friend, Billy?” 

He smiles at her, grabs a fry from her plate and dips it into her ice cream. He makes a face as he swallows it, and Robin laughs. 

And to her surprise, to her complete and utter astonishment, Billy stops hanging out with them, with Tommy and Carol and the lot. He still hangs with his teammates, of course, which does include Tommy, and Robin still has band and talks to everyone there, but in between classes, and at lunch, she and Billy sit together, and they study together in the library, and some days hang out after school as well. 

—

“Carol threw a fit,” Billy tells her, another day, when they’re back at the diner. 

“Oh?” Robin leans her chin on her hand. 

“She and Tommy cornered me after practice, and she asked me if I was letting my new ‘girlfriend’ control me now. I took one look at them, laughed in their faces, and left.” 

Robin laughs. “I can’t imagine she liked that.” 

“Probably not,” Billy says, flippant. “But I don’t care. You were right, they’re all assholes.” 

She smirks at him. “Yeah, and so are you.” 

He grins back, and it’s still sharp, but it doesn’t feel like a wild animal anymore. There’s mirth dancing in his eyes. “And so am I.” 

He reaches for his milkshake, takes a sip, and when he looks back up, he’s got cream on the tip of his nose. Robin starts giggling and reaches for her camera. “Don’t move.” 

“What?” Billy frowns. “What’s so- I’ve got cream on my nose, haven’t I.” 

“Don’t move!” 

She snaps the picture, and his deadpan stare is one of the best things she’s seen. “Billy, the cream-nosed reindeer!” she singsongs, and Billy grabs a napkin and wipes it off. 

“Oh, fuck off, Rob,” he says, but starts laughing as soon as Robin shows him the photograph.

—

They go the records shop together. Robin finds the new Heart album and takes it with her while looking at other albums. 

Billy looks up at her like he’s just realised something. “How come you know so many languages?”

“How come you know I know so many languages?” 

Billy smiles at her. “I have my ways.” 

Robin laughs, and turns to look through a row of cassette tapes. “My dad’s mum is French, so I learned French. Then I learned Spanish and Italian, because they’re all similar to each other. And I guess... I want the reassurance I won’t have to worry about language barriers when I leave Hawkins.” 

Billy turns around to glance at her, quickly. Robin sees him frown before he goes back to looking at music. “You’re leaving Hawkins?” 

“I mean, not  _ now _ . But eventually. Aren’t you as well? Or have you fallen in love with small town Indiana life during these last few months?” 

Billy laughs. “Definitely not. Hey...?” He turns to look at her over his shoulder. 

“Yeah?” 

“Have you ever been to Cali?”

Robin laughs. “I’ve never left Indiana.” 

Billy’s eyes go wide. “Fuck, Rob. I’ll have to show you the ocean.” 

She keeps laughing. “Sure. I’d like that.” 

Billy smiles at her again, and it’s softer than any expression she’s seen on his face before. “How about your mum?” he asks, and turns back around.

Robin’s mirth dies. “Oh... She died. Years ago.” 

Billy glances back at her. There’s understanding in his eyes. “I’m sorry. My mum left, when I was a kid.” 

Robin frowns. “So Mrs. Hargrove isn’t-“ 

Billy bursts out laughing. “Susan? No, she’s not my mum. She married my dad a couple years back. Max is her kid.” 

Robin figures that’s the red haired kid she’s seen him driving around. 

“You gonna buy that?” Billy asks with a nod towards the Heart album Robin’s still got. 

She glances down at it. “Oh! Yeah.” 

“Great. I’m done, so let’s get out of here.” 

—

Jenny corners her after band practice. Robin’s just finished putting her clarinet back in her case, and most people have filtered out of the room. 

“Are you dating Billy Hargrove?” 

Robin startles would hard she’s about to drop her case. She brushes it off, stands up and leaves the room. Jenny follows. “What?” 

“You’ve been seen all over town together,” she says. “It’s all anyone’s talking about.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” Robin says, frowning. 

“Does he know that?” Jenny asks, and nods towards the parking lot. They’ve just stepped outside, and Billy’s leaning against his Camaro. He waves at Robin as soon as his eyes land on her, and smiles. 

Robin’s frown deepens. 

Billy walks up to them, and puts and arm around Robin’s shoulders, pulling her close. She’s seen the gesture as nothing other than friendly before, but now she’s acutely aware of how close they are. How their sides are basically pressed together. 

“You mind if I take you away from your friend, Rob?” 

Robin’s starting to panic. She tries to play it off, shakes her head and lets Billy steer her towards his car. 

“I need to talk to you,” he tells her when they get there. “It’s important.” 

_Oh god, no._ _He’s going to ask her for a date, or something. Shit._ _Fuck_. 

“Can you follow my car?” 

Robin nods. She doesn’t trust her voice to carry.

But Billy frowns, and turns to look at her. He’s still got his arm around her. “Rob?” 

Robin clears her throat, swallows, before speaking. “Yeah. Sure.” 

She ducks under his arm, and walks over to her bike. She considers just driving away, especially when she realises he’s taking her to the Quarry. Robin knows her classmates sometimes go there to have sex in the back of their cars. But she’s had more fun with Billy lately than she’s had with anyone else in a long while, and it seems shitty to not give him the benefit of the doubt. 

He parks up there, overlooking the water, and leans over to open the passenger side door. 

Robin’s apprehensive as she gets off her bike and gets into the car, closing the door behind her. 

Billy staring at her, meeting her gaze head on. “I want you to know that if this doesn’t go the way I think it will, then no one will believe you. You can say whatever you want, I’ll tell them all it’s just lies.” 

_ Jesus Christ. He’s going to murder her. She was a fool to ever think she could trust a shark.  _

“Rob?” 

She nods, quickly, and Billy turns away from here, looking out the windscreen. She sees him take a deep breath in. 

_ Here it comes, _ she thinks.  _ He’s going to kiss you, or he’s going to say something horrible.  _

“Have you ever been to the club by the highway?” 

Robin’s mind comes to a halt. He’s still not looking at her. Robin sees him swallow, clench his hand where it rests above the steering wheel. 

Then the meaning of what he’s asked catches up to her, and Robin gasps. She’s strange, light, giddy. “Billy...?”

He looks over at her, sharply. His eyes are wide, and scared. “Have you?” he repeats.

Robin shakes her head. “But I saw it, once. Driving by, and I’ve heard of it. Easy to connect the dots. I’ve never been inside, though.” 

“Would you like to?” Billy says, and starts worrying at his bottom lip. 

Robin smiles, can feel tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. It’s grange to think, after what she’d been afraid would happen, but Robin’s never felt as safe before. “Yes,” she whispers, nodding. 

Neither one of them have really said it aloud, said their particular sexuality, and yet both of them understand. 

—

Robin’s pretty certain they’re the youngest people there. 

The club’s in a shitty little building, off the highway outside Hawkins, and the sign outside is bleak neon, the bulbs seeming to barely have it in themselves to glow anymore. 

But the inside, the inside is the most beautiful thing Robin’s ever seen. There’s a pride flag beside an American flag hung up on the wall, the bartender is dressed in a mesh shirt, there’s a disco ball over the dance floor, a fairy lights high up where the walls meet the ceiling. Robin can see her wonder mirrored in Billy’s expression as they glance around. 

She guesses that is part of the reason they’re let in. The Drag Queen acting as a bouncer takes one look at them, at their nervous excitement and wide eyes, and smiles, letting them in without checking their ID:s. 

And Robin takes Billy’s hand and drags him with her to the dance floor. She doesn’t feel comfortable yet to flirt, or dance with anyone else, even though some of those around them seem to be college age and not older. Billy doesn’t seem to mind, he just laughs and twirls her around. 

And for the first time in her life, Robin isn’t afraid to be herself. To let loose, to stop being on guard, because everyone around them is just like them, and anyone who would judge them wouldn’t even dare come here. 

They find themselves at the bar, a little later. Robin’s telling Billy about all the rumours she’d heard about him before. 

“Apparently you’ve been able to do all that and still get to your geography test on time,” she laughs. 

“You know, I’ve figured out that they’re all so bored because there’s nothing to do here that all they spend their time doing is making up wild stories just to make their existence more interesting.”

Robin pouts. She might be getting a little tipsy. “So you mean to tell me that you  _ haven’t _ got ties to gang members in California?” she gasps, scandalised. 

Billy chuckles. “Out of the two of us, I think you’d be more likely to be a gang member, just based on your ride.” 

Robin taps her finger against the bar with each point she makes. “Right, but I’m also a girl, and a lesbian, and in band. You’re a jock. From  _ California _ .” She mimics the dreamy tone she’s heard people speak in about Billy’s roots. 

Billy laughs. “A  _ gay _ jock.” 

“Still a jock. And an ass.” 

“And an ass.” 

—

Robin has a marching band performance the same night Billy has a basketball game. They perform outside, in the light of spotlights as the sun starts to go down, and Robin can’t see Billy in the crowd but knows he’s there. Afterwards, they move into the gym, and Robin takes a seat still in uniform to watch Billy play.

She doesn’t really know the more intricate details of the sport, but she knows the basics, and she claps and cheers as Billy scores them point after point. 

Harrington’s there as well, and he seems almost as good as Billy. She’d heard their rivalry extended to on the court as well as off it, but there doesn’t seem to be any sign of it now. They’re good together. 

On the other hand, they haven’t had much of a rivalry at all since Billy started hanging out with her. She’s pretty certain Billy’s becoming her best friend, and she his. 

Somehow, Billy’s still popular, still the King of Hawkins High, even though he doesn’t hang out with the other popular kids in school. Robin isn’t certain how he’s doing it. 

Hawkins High wins the game, and Robin claps along with the rest of her school. Afterwards, she goes to wait for Billy by the Camaro. 

He laughs when he comes out, hair still wet, and pokes at her uniform. 

“Listen, Rob, it’s because I know you love that shit that I’m saying this: You’d better go change, or you’re going to get beer all over it. We’ve been invited to a party!” 

Robin rolls her eyes, but drops her case into the backseat in exchange for her bag. She goes back into the school, and changes in one of the stalls in the girls’ bathroom. 

Billy blasts music on ten way to the party, and Robin joins in. They’ve managed to find songs they both enjoy, and Robin laughs as he drums on the wheel with one hand. 

Even Harrington’s at the party, it turns out. Robin hasn’t seen him at any of the ones she’s been to, but it seems like a sweet victory party is enough to get him into the party mood. He’s hanging around Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler, which seems a little weird from what Robin knows of their history, but her and Billy hanging out is also weird, so whatever works for them. 

They leave early, because Robin’s dad promised her pizza, and told her to bring Billy along. ‘It’ll either be victory pizza or comfort pizze’ he’d told her with a bright smile. 

Billy’s still acting weird around her dad. Pierre’s managed to make him call him by his name, rather than ‘Mr. Buckley’, but he always adds a ‘sir’ afterwards, which Robin doesn’t get. She wonders how goddamn strict his dad must be. 

Robin puts on a movie, and leans back against Billy, a plate of pizza in one hand and her dad smiling at them. 

—

Billy’s at her place, one morning, making pancakes, and Robin’s sitting atop the counter across from the stove. Billy backs away, and Robin grins, and moves her legs so she catches his waist in between them. She throws her arms around his shoulders. 

“You wanna fucking wrestle now, Rob?” Billy asks, laughing, and steps away from the counter to flip the pancake. Robin’s still hanging on to him, and screams when the counter disappears from under her. 

“If you let me fall, I’m going to fucking murder you!” 

Billy scoffs, but moves to hold her up with one hand under her knee. “You should’ve thought of that before you decided to attach yourself to me like a koala.” 

“If I sit in your shoulders, we’ll be taller than both my dad and the Chief!” 

“I’m surprised Max and her friends haven’t tried that one,” Billy chuckles, and drops his hand. 

Robin barely manages to get her legs under her before she hits the ground, and afterwards she punches Billy’s arm while he laughs at her. He makes up for it by serving her a plate piled high with pancakes. 

—

Robin’s wall is becoming full of pictures. She’s got herself and the rest of the marching band, Billy in his basketball clothes next to her in her uniform, her dad at work in the restaurant, her dad on his own motorcycle, Robin on hers, Billy at various parties and the club, a picture of her dancing on the roof of the Camaro by the quarry at sunset, the two of them at the diner, shopping, Billy smoking in the Camaro, Billy concentrating on a book in the library, biting his lip while he reads, a picture of rain hitting a window...

—

They’re driving home from the Club late one night, when the sound of sirens interrupts their shared laughter. Robin sees flashing lights of red and blue in the side mirrors. 

Billy pulls of to the side of the road, and parks the Camaro. A squad car pulls up right behind them, and a cop saunters up to Billy’s window, hands on his belt. He knocks on the window with the knuckle of one finger, and Billy rolls it down.

The officer leans in, looks over the two of them and Robin sees something flash in his eyes before they focus on Billy. He’s got a moustache, thick and brown and possibly the ugliest thing Robin’s ever seen. She guess he’s somewhere in his thirties. “You driving drunk, kid?” 

“No, sir,” Billy says. He’s got his head bowed down, an uncharacteristically submissive position, while Robin stares head on at the officer. It’s true. Billy’s not drunk, he’s amazingat holding his liquor and besides, Robin’s pretty sure he only drank one beer. The high of being someplace where they fit in is enough for both of them most nights. 

“No? You putting your little girlfriend at risk, you know.” He’s been focused on Billy up until then, but now he glances over at her, and gives a smile that can only be described as leering. Billy looks up, quickly, glancing at her before turning back to the officer. 

“You’re not her type,” he tells him, sharply, in that voice that means he’s ready for a fight and that would have most of their peers running. 

But the officer just smirks, tilts his head and looks at Billy. “No?” 

Billy shakes his head. Robin can see his hands clenching in his lap. “But you’re mine,” he says, quickly, smoothly. 

The officer throws his head back in laughter, before nodding. “Yes, that does remind me. There’s only one place out here that you two could possibly have gone drinking, isn’t there? Well, come on then. Step out of the vehicle.” 

Billy does, and the sound of his door closing seems to echo in Robin’s ears. She watches him follow the officer around the Camaro, until they disappear behind the squad car. She looks down into her lap and feels ill, angry tears threatening to escape from the corners of her eyes. She wants to stand up, run after them and drag Billy away, drive back to Hawkins and hide in her dad’s arms. But she can’t. She can’t move. She’s rooted to her seat, and Robin hates herself for it. 

Billy comes back, roughly ten minutes later, and Robin hears the officer start up his car and drive away, but she’s not focusing at that. Billy’s hands are trembling, and his eyes look red when he glances at her, before starting up the car. 

Robin reaches out a hand and places it above his on the wheel, before he can pull back on the empty road. His hand is ice cold and shaking. “Billy-“ she starts. 

“Don’t.” His voice is low, threatening. He forgets he doesn’t scare Robin anymore, and perhaps he never really did. 

“Billy. Why did you-?”

He sighs. “There’s only one thing men like that want. If I hadn’t done it, he’d have told everyone about us. He knew, alright? He already knew. And they’d have believed him, because he’s a cop and we’re two queer fucking teenagers.” He still won’t look at her. Robin wants to grab his face between both of her hands and make him face her, but she knows that’s the least thing he needs right now. He hasn’t pulled his hand away from hers. “The world is already going to be shitty and unfair to you because you’re a girl, Rob. You don’t need this as well.”

“Neither do you,” she whispers, hating how weak her voice sounds. 

Billy shrugs, laughs humourlessly. “Yeah, well. See it as my punishment for being an arse. Besides, it isn’t my first time. Cali wasn’t just a dance on roses.”

He lets her hold his hand all the way back to Hawkins. 

—

Billy’s eyes stay haunted a while, after that. Robin wonders if he somehow manages to process it by himself, or if he just figures out how to hide it from her. Robin likes to think she’s gotten closer to Billy now, that she’s learned how to read his moods and mannerisms. But she doesn’t know what to do about this, and hates how powerless she feels. Hates that he won’t talk to her about what happened, and hates herself for feeling relieved when he stops looking like he might fall apart at the seams. 

—

Robin meets Max for the first time one day, when it’s starting to get warmer to the point where Robin doesn’t bother wearing anything other than her leather jacket over her clothes.

She drives up to Billy’s house on Cherry Lane, because Billy hadn’t been at school at all that day, and Robin’s worried, and sees a red headed preteen sitting on the steps outside, seemingly cleaning the skateboard she’s got in her lap. 

Max looks up when Robin parks, and frowns. “You that girl Billy’s been hanging out with?” 

She puts her helmet under her arm and leans “I’m Robin, yeah.” 

“Cool. I’m Max.”

Robin smiles. “I know.”

Max grimaces. “Does Billy talk about me?”

“Mostly to tell me what a pain in the ass you are, but I can tell he sounds fond whilehe’s bitching.” 

Max laughs and nods. “He’s good at bitching.”

“Yeah,” Robin agrees and nods to towards the house. “He home?” 

A shadow seems to pass over Max face, and she doesn’t answer. Instead, she stands up at, leaves her skateboard on the ground, and walks up to Robin. She’s staring at the bike. 

Robin can tell she’s impressed, even if she’s clearly trying not to show exactly  _ how _ much. 

“Tell you what, I’ll let you ride with if you get me Billy,” she says, and sees Max bite her lip. 

She looks up at Robin through strands of red hair. “He’s sick,” she says, a little defiantly.

“Well, I thought he might be, so I told our teacher I’d bring him his homework.” She starts walking towards the front door. “So I’ll just hand him this and be on my way, then.” 

“He’s sleeping!” Max shouts from behind her, and then, a little quieter but no less firm: “He was sleeping when I went outside a couple of minutes ago.” 

“Okay...” Robin says slowly. “Can I give you his stuff then, and you’ll bring it to him?” 

“Yeah,” Max nods. “Sure.” 

So Robin gets his homework out from her bag, and hands it over. Max watches her until Robin can’t see her anymore. 

A week later, Billy comes back to school. He flinches when Robin hugs him, and he’s got fading bruises peeking out from beneath his clothes. 

—

“My dad thinks I’m queer,” Billy tells her, while they’re sitting on the hood of his car up overlooking the Quarry. There’s bird song from up in the trees above them. Welcoming spring back. 

_ You are queer _ , Robin thinks, but doesn’t have time to say anything before Billy continues. 

“Max told him you’re my girlfriend. She knows I’m not... That we’re not...” He sighs. “Anyway, now he’s turning fifty, and having a party, and he wants to meet you.” He’s not looking at her, instead focusing on a thread of his jeans. 

“So you want me to go to a party with you and pretend we’re dating?” She shrugs. “Sure.” 

Billy glances over at her, looking hopeful. “Really?”

“Why not? Half the school already thinks we’re dating; it seems easy enough. And if we’re dating each other, then no one can accuse us of... anything else.”

Billy smiles at her, a fragile little thing. “Thanks, Rob.” 

So they go and buy Robin a dress, Billy coming along to help her figure out the level of formality she needs, and a few days later Robin finds herself at the ‘Party Barn’, as everyone calls it in school. It’s a big barn that somebody probably once used for its original purpose, but for as long as Robin can remember it’s been a building anyone can hire to throw an event in. 

There’s drinks, and no one bats an eye at Robin nursing a glass. Other than Max, she and Billy are the youngest there. Everyone else seems to be either Susan or Neil’s work friends, except for one woman who spends most of her time talking with Max. Susan’s younger sister, Billy tells her. 

She sticks close to Billy the entire time, or perhaps he’s the one sticking close to her. She doesn’t know anyone else there, and neither does he it seems, not counting his family. Eventually, Neil finds his way to them, an arm around Susan’s waist. 

They’re both taller than her and Billy, Neil almost a full head taller than her and the top of Billy’s head reaching to about his father’s eyes. Immediately, Robin feels Billy go almost rigid beside her, and Robin has to suppress a shudder. Neil’s smiling, but there’s something... _off_ , about him. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes when he looks at them, and there’s something cold about his whole demeanour. 

He holds his hand out to Robin, and she shakes it. His grip is tight, strong. “Neil Hargrove,” he says as he withdraws. “Robin, I presume?”

“Yes, Mr. Hargrove,” Robin says, because if this is the man who taught Billy to address her own father as ‘sir’ then he’ll probably want a similar level of politeness from her. 

“Your father’s built himself a nice business. I assume he’s taught you how to cook well?” 

Robin wants to answer with a scoff, wants to comment on his obvious sexism, wants to laugh. But Billy’s tense beside her, so instead she just nods. 

“I’m glad Billy’s found himself a good girl.” His gaze seems to flick over to Billy’s at those last two words, and Robin wants him to stop looking at him like that. 

So she smiles. She leans back against Billy and places a hand on his bicep. “So am I, Mr. Hargrove,” she says, and tries to put on the most sugary sweet tone she can, tries to look as enamoured as possible. 

And Billy’s dad nods, smiles, and turns away to leave with his wife in tow. 

Robin glances up at Billy just in time to see his mask falter and it’s strange how she already knows that expression means he can barely keep himself from bursting out laughing. 

Robin smirks back at him. “Think I left a good impression?” 

“A fantastic one, you shitty little bird.” 

“Tweet tweet motherfucker.” 

“Christ, Rob, shut up,” he says, but he’s grinning at her.

They spend the rest of the time walking around and keeping away from the others. No one talks to them. Then there’s dinner, and they end up sitting with Max and her aunt. Afterwards, they step away, and Billy’s getting quieter and quieter the more time goes by. 

The sun’s starting to set when they end up sitting against the wall, outside the back of the barn where no one else is, and Billy’s pulled his legs up and has his arms placed atop of them. 

“Thanks for coming here with me, Rob,” he says, and there’s a heaviness to his voice that Robin hasn’t heard before. 

She decides to try then, because she’s worried and suspicious. “Billy...” she starts, and waits until she’s certain she’s got his attention. He doesn’t turn to look at her, instead staring at the shaking of the tree crowns as birds take flight. But he does tilt his head, so Robin knows he’s listening. “Did... Did that cop come back? Did you fight him? Did he hurt you?” The words, hard to utter at first, leave her in a rush. 

And Billy throws his head back and laughs. It’s so loud Robin’s afraid someone will find them. 

“Billy?” She reaches out, lays her hand over his on his knee. “Max told me you were sick, but I saw the bruises, Billy. I saw them.” 

Billy leans his head to the side, lets it fall to a rest against her shoulder, and pretty soon Robin hears his breath hitch, and the laughter stops, and her dress starts getting wet. 

She turns around quickly, tries to look at him but she can’t from the angle he’s got his head in, and reaches up a hand. It hovers between them. Robin doesn’t know where to put it. It falls back to her side. 

“We can go to the Chief,” she says instead, maybe a little desperately. 

Billy chuckles wetly. “No, we fucking can’t. They’ll just pat each other on the back for a job well done. ‘It’s what little fags like that deserve’. That’s what my dad will say, by the way. God, Rob. I didn’t meet that fucking pig again. It’s my dad who gave me those bruises. He’s been hitting me for as long as I can remember. And we can’t tell anyone about that either, for the same reason we can’t tell anyone about to cop, okay?” 

“I-“

“Don’t say anything. It’s fine, it’s okay, just don’t... don’t go.” 

Robin doesn’t. She sits there in the grass, and holds Billy’s hand, and lets him cry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, Chapter 2! 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING:  
> Teenager gets drugged by adult at a club, but others step in before anything worse can happen, although it is referenced that it could’ve. Also, references to child abuse. 
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> Still don’t own “Stranger Things”. They’re quoting “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, “Anna Karenina” by Lev Tolstoy, and “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen. I know “Secret” by Heart only came out in 1990, but I heard that song and immediately thought of lesbians and Robin, specifically, so I don’t care. Pretend it came out earlier.

Billy’s sleeping over again. Robin’s lying in bed, on her back, and staring up at her dark ceiling. She can’t stop thinking about what he’d told her, can’t stop thinking about the first time they talked, and the second time, when she told him how to clean off his blood, and the third time, when he came to her for help, even though they didn’t really know each other yet. How he’s trusted her to help him, and how he’d trusted her now, how he’d let her in. 

She turns her head to look over at him, on his makeshift bed on the floor. She can’t tell if he’s sleeping yet. 

Robin’s not certain what possesses her to move from her bed, but she does, she stands up and lowers herself to lie down beside him. She puts her arm around him, and he gasps. Still awake, then. 

She would’ve imagined he’d tense up, but he doesn’t. He’s relaxed, and even leaning into her touch a little. 

Robin wonders when the last time was that he was held gently, in a non-sexual manner. 

And without anyone having to say anything, they both stand up, and go lie down in her bed, curled around each other. He’s never going to have to sleep in his car again, not as long as she’s there. 

— 

They don’t bother with all the pillows, or the blankets, or duvets, from then on. Billy sleeps in her bed, and Robin’s dad knows about both their sexualities, because Robin told him about the club, and he tells her he’s just glad she has someone and somewhere she can be herself with. 

—

The phone rings while Robin’s getting herself another cup of tea, one Saturday. She picks it up. 

“Buckley residence, who am I speaking to?” 

_ “Rob, it’s me,”  _ Billy’s voice comes over the line.  _ “Neil threw me out for the weekend. Can you come pick me up?” _

“I’m sick. I’ll get my dad to go, don’t worry. Where are you?” 

_ “By Melvald’s,” _ Billy answers, and Robin hears the hesitation in his voice. She knows why he gets nervous around her dad, now, at least. 

“Okay. Sit tight. Bye, Billy, see you soon.” 

_ “Thanks, Rob.”  _

She smiles to herself. “Anytime.”

Her dad’s reading in the living room, the tv on in the background, but when Robin tells him Billy needs picking up he simply puts a bookmark in, kisses the top of her head, and goes to put on his coat.

He comes back with Billy around half an hour later, and Billy seems way more relaxed around Pierre now. Robin wonders what they must have talked about in the car for him to now be acting like this, but doesn’t ask. 

Robin’s waiting for them in the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She takes Billy’s hand and drags him with her into her room. 

“He hurt you?” she asks, as soon as the door’s closed behind them. 

Billy shakes his head. “No, he just threw me out. No car. Told me to come back and drive Max to school on Monday.” 

“Well, at least you can spend the weekend playing nurse. I’m dying.” She falls back against her bed, and hears Billy start laughing. 

“You’re such a drama queen, christ, Rob.” 

“Shut up!” she groans, and throws a pillow at him. From the sound of it, he probably catches it. “Read to me.” 

“What do you want me to read?” 

“I don’t know. Quote something.”

“ _‘Reader, I married him’_ ,” Billy starts, and Robin smiles. “ _‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’_ , _‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession-‘_ “

“ _‘A single man’_.” 

“Yeah, yeah. _‘... that a single man in possession of good fortune-‘_ “

“ _‘A good fortune’_.”

“For fuck’s sake, Rob. _‘...that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’_. Satisfied?” 

“Actually, this is the most fun I’ve had all day. Please continue entertaining me.” 

Billy chuckles but keeps quoting the stuff they’ve read in class, and soon they end up in another argument about the correct quotes from Pride and Prejudice, which evolves into something akin a whole literary debate.

—

“You didn’t tell me you were fucking contagious,” Billy complains at lunch on Wednesday.

“I was sick. What the fuck did you expect. Why aren’t you home, in bed?” 

“What, and miss Mrs. Kent’s English class? Are you kidding?” 

“True. I mean, if we learnt anything from this weekend, it’s that you need to learn the actual quotes.” 

Billy honest to god pouts at her, and Robin laughs. But then he turns to cough into his elbow, and now she’s frowning instead. 

“Really, though, Billy. Why aren’t you at home?” 

He sighs. “Neil wouldn’t let me.” 

“Fuck your dad, Billy. He’s an asshole.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” he says, and holds up his juice carton like it’s a beer glass. Robin holds up her own, and knocks it against his. 

—

It’s Friday, and they’re on their way towards class, when Billy goes all pale and turns to rush towards the nearest bathroom. Robin doesn’t spare a second to think before she’s running after him. In the back of her mind, she registers the thought that the men’s bathroom is utterly disgusting, but then Billy’s crashing through the door into a stall and falling to the floor in front of the toilet. 

Robin crushes down and holds his hair away from his face. He convulses, and it smells disgusting, but he’s her best friend, so who cares. When it seems like he can’t get anything else out, he groans and rests his head against the white porcelain. Which is probably really fucking dirty based on everything else in here. 

“Rob,” he says, voice shaky. “You can’t be in here.” 

He’s right, of course. Robin doesn’t like it, but he’s right. 

So she looks at him, figures he’ll be alright alone for a couple minutes, and stands back up. 

She quick to get to the nurse’s office, and explains to her that Billy’s parents thought he was faking being sick, but he’s currently throwing up, so she would like permission to drive him home. She gets it, and goes back to the bathroom where she left Billy. 

A freshman’s washing his hands when Robin steps in, and he squeals as soon as he sees her. She’s walking with such confidence he must’ve gotten scared he’d stepped into the girls’ by mistake. 

Robin ignores him, and opens the stall door to find Billy leaning against the wall and groaning. Robin grabs his arm and helps him up, out of the bathroom and out through the front door of the school, and deposits him in the passenger seat of the Camaro. She goes back to the school to get their shit from their lockers, and then drives him home to Cherry Lane. 

Most of Billy’s energy seems to have left him by that time, so he leans on her the whole way through the house as he guides her to his bedroom. 

It’s the first time Robin’s ever been over. She can’t help but notice how there’s no pictures of either Billy nor Max on the walls, nothing like how her dad keeps all her school photographs proudly displayed. Other than that, it looks like a normal house. 

She leaves Billy in his bedroom to go to the kitchen and get him a class of water. She finds medicine in a drawer in the bathroom, and comes back to his bedroom with both. Billy’s changed into sweatpants and curled up under his duvet. 

Robin stays with him for the first couple of hours, until Billy looks up at her with a tired expression. There’s fear shining in his eyes when he tells her he needs to go pick up Max. Robin pats his arm and tells him she’ll go and get her. Billy smiles gratefully at her. 

Max frowns when she sees Robin pull up in the Camaro. Robin can see a group of boys staring wide eyed at her from behind the redhead. Robin rolls down the window and leans out. 

“Where’s Billy?” Max asks. 

“Sick. Get in.” 

Max furrows her brow but walks around the car and gets into the passenger seat. Meanwhile, Robin grins and waves to the boys. 

Their eyes go wide, she thinks one blushes, another starts sputtering, and they all pretend they weren’t staring. Robin laughs. 

Max scoffs from beside her. “I see why he likes you.” 

_ Yeah, I like him as well _ _,_ Robin thinks. 

They’re quiet the first minute or so, and Robin’s considering putting on music, when Max speaks again. 

“Thank you,” she says, quietly. 

Robin frowns, glances over quickly before moving her gaze back to the road. “For what?”

“Coming to get me. Helping him. He’s... he’s better, since he started hanging out with you. So thank you. For giving me my brother back.” 

Robin wonders what that means, what they’ve must have been like in California, or when they were younger. She doesn’t know how old they were when they came into each other’s lives. She doesn’t ask, either, but keeps it to herself. 

“He’s my best friend,” she simply says, and they fall quiet again until Robin parks outside the house. 

Max turns to her, determined. “You can’t come back in. Neil will be home soon.”

“You’ll take care of him?”

“Yeah,” Max says, and sounds older than her years. 

Robin nods, and they both get out of the car. She hands Max the keys to the Camaro, and with one last glance at the house, turns around and starts walking towards the high school. Her bike’s still there, after all. 

—

Robin meets Lisa at the club. 

She’s shorter than Robin, although the heels make up for it, and she’s got big chestnut coloured curls reaching past her shoulders. She’s also a Junior, although from a different small town, one close to Hawkins. 

They dance, and drink, and on the ride home Robin tells Billy all about her. About how she’d told Robin she’d be back the next Friday. Billy smiles at her, and tells her he’s happy for her. 

—

Lisa asks her on a date. They both decide to go to a diner in a third town, where no one knows either of them, and they spend hours talking and laughing. 

Back at the club, Lisa kisses her under the shining lights from the disco ball above them. 

They go to a park, and laugh and let their hands rub against each other as they walk. 

Robin thinks she might be close to falling in love for the first time. She’s had crushes on girls before, most recently Tammy Thompson, but she’s always known those girls were unattainable. This, however. This is a real relationship. Maybe she’ll introduce her to her dad, soon. 

—

Lisa shows her a secluded spot, overlooking the town, and it’s similar to the Quarry back in Hawkins. Especially because Robin pops in the Heart album she bought that day with Billy, and while _Secret_ plays around them, Robin puts a hand behind Lisa’s neck and guides their lips together. They end up on a blanket in Lisa’s pickup, kissing and touching and exploring and caressing. 

Afterwards, when Robin’s flushed from kissing, they go to the movies and hold hands in the dark. 

They’re sitting at a café, after the movie, when two girls and one boy walk by and stop at the sight of Lisa. From the sound of it, they’re friends, although from Lisa’s expression it seem like she wants them to go away. Her eyes are wide, and she’s pressing her lips together. Those lips that had sucked all over Robin’s skin just hours ago. She guesses they don’t know Lisa’s gay, and she’s worried how she’ll explain to them who Robin is. 

But they don’t really pay any attention to Robin. Then one of the girls opens her mouth, and Robin’s first relationship starts unraveling. 

“How’s Jenna, Liz?” she asks, and Robin watches Lisa as she shakily exhales. She glances over at Robin, and a blush starts to creep up on her cheeks. 

“Who’s Jenna?” Robin asks, and now Lisa’s friends look awkward, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Like they don’t know how to explain what this girl Robin’s never heard of is to Lisa. 

Lisa, who’d turn to stare down at her own lap at Robin’s question, now raises her head and meets Robin’s gaze. “She’s my girlfriend,” Lisa says, quietly. 

Robin feels like she’s been slapped. “I see,” she says, and feels proud of how her voice holds. She pushes away from the table, stands up, and doesn’t turn back to glance at her even as she calls her name. 

There are tears streaming down her cheeks and pooling in her helmet as she drives home. 

Her dad’s still working, so instead she grabs the phone and calls Billy. 

_“Rob?”_ Billy immediately says, concern clear in his voice. Robin guesses he can hear her crying. 

“She... she, she cheated, Billy. Or, I... I guess she cheated on someone else, with me.” 

_ “A man?” _

“No,” Robin sobs. “Another girl. I feel so fucking used.” 

_ “Where is she? Rob, where is she? I’m going to fucking kill her.”  _

“No, no, Billy, just... Just come here. Please.” 

_“Yeah. Yeah.”_ He’s breathing harshly, trying to calm himself down, Robin guesses. _“I’m coming.”_

Billy comes over a little while later, and he’s got fries from the diner and an entire tub of ice cream with him. Robin throws her arms around his neck and sobs into his shoulder. He lifts her up, leaves her on the couch with her goodies, and goes over to the kitchen. He comes back with two mugs of hot chocolate.

He lets Robin lean her head against his shoulder as he sits down beside her, rubbing her back. 

It feels like her heart’s being ripped in two. Like a whole is opening up and Robin doesn’t know how to fill it back up. It isn’t shaped like her dad’s hugs, or hot chocolate, or fries and ice cream, or Billy’s friendship, it’s shaped like Lisa. And as much as Robin tries to, the pieces don’t fit. It’s like trying to force a circle into a hole shaped like a rectangle. 

But Billy listens to her as she cries, and shouts, and vents. 

—

They’re in Billy’s car, listening to the radio, when suddenly _Secret_ comes on. It feels like it’s mocking her. 

“Turn it off. I can’t listen to it. It makes me think of her.” 

“We’ve all had our music ruined by love,” Billy says, and pops in a Metallica album instead. “But hey, one day you’ll be able to listen to it and think back on what you had with fondness.” 

“I’m so... I’m so  _ mad _ at her. That was my favourite fucking song and now I can’t listen to it without thinking off her. Fuck her. She broke my  _ fucking _ heart.” 

“That  _ bitch _ .” There’sa pause, and then: “Should we go and throw eggs on her car?” 

Robin laughs slightly. “Don’t tempt me like that. She’ll know who did it.” 

Billy turns to look at her, and there’s fierceness in his gaze, protection. “ _Good_. She played with you, Robin. She deserves it.” 

Robin sighs. “I mostly just want to talk to the other girl. Tell her what type of person her girlfriend is. But I don’t fucking know who the other one is!”

“It sucks. It sucks, I know. It really fucking sucks.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

—

They make a whole event out of it. They drag blankets and pillows up to the roof of Robin’s building, and sit down. Billy’s got his lighter, and Robin’s got all the Polaroid’s she took of Lisa, and together they burn them. The plastic cover of the film reflects the flame. Robin watches as they crumble to ash, and it feels like her heart is starting to stitch itself back together more and more for each one. 

Afterwards, she leans back against Billy, and looks out over the lights of Hawkins, and Billy tells her about the stars and the ocean and the crashing of waves at night. 

She thinks she falls asleep there, Billy’s heart beating a steady rhythm against one ear, and his voice calming in the other. She wakes up in her own bed, Billy still asleep beside her. The early morning sun shines in through her window, and Robin can hear the singing of birds. 

—

They got back to the club. _‘For Robin to nurse her broken heart back to health’_ , as Billy says. _‘With a night of alcohol and dancing and loud music.’_

And Robin attempts to do just that. Less alcohol though, because the bartender knows they’re underage, and so won’t serve them anywhere near as much as he serves the rest of the club goers. So mostly, she spends her time on the dance floor, trying to shake off Lisa from her memories. 

She’s dancing when one of the Drag Queens taps her on the shoulder, and takes her arm to lead her away from the sea of dancing bodies.

“I think you need to go check on your friend, darling,” she tells her, and nods towards the bar. 

Robin frowns, and starts pushing past people to get there. 

Billy’s sitting on one of the barstools, leaning against the bar, shivers wracking his whole frame. The bartenders crouches down beside him, seeming to be trying to get Billy’s attention. His expression’s a mix between anger and concern, voice soft and gentle. 

He looks relieved when he sees Robin, and straightens up a little to face her. 

“I think he got drugged,” he says, and Robin’s mouth falls open. She gets closer to Billy, who groans and lets his head come to a rest against her side. “There was a man, at least twice his age, trying to get him to go with him. We threw him out.” 

It feels like there’s a fist in her chest, squeezing her heart. And yet somehow, it’s hammering like it’s trying to break free from her rib cage. “Did he... Did he have a moustache? Big, brown? Ugly as all hell? And straight short hair, and pretty thin build?” 

The bartender nods. “Yeah.”

Robin curses under her breath. She puts a hand on Billy’s shoulder, steps back and leans down, trying to get eye contact. “Billy? Hey?” 

“Rob, Rob, everything’s swimming,” he gasps, and Robin swallows. She needs to get them out of here, away from the pounding music and oppressive smell of sweat. 

She puts a hand under his arm, and Billy, seeming to understand what she wants him to do, stands up, sways, and then his legs go out. Both Robin and the bartender steady him, preventing him from falling to the sticky ground with hands on each of his arms. 

The bartender helps her bring him out to the Camaro, opens the passenger door after Robin gets Billy’s keys out and unlocks it. Together, they get Billy in and close the door. He rests his head against the cool glass, and Robin looks worried at him before turning to the bartender. 

“Should I take him to the hospital?”

“No, I don’t think it’s necessary. He should be fine sleeping it off. Just get him someplace safe.” 

Robin nods and rounds the Camaro. She gets in on the driver’s side, and starts the drive back to Hawkins. Billy’s silent, and Robin keeps glancing over at him. 

Then, about five minutes from Robin’s flat, he reaches over and pats her arm. Robin shoots him a worried look. He’s pale, and keeps swallowing. 

“Gonna... gonna thro’up,” he slurs. 

Robin drives to the side of the road, and as soon the car stops moving Billy’s leaning against the door and more or less falling out of his seat. 

Robin throws her own door open and has to hurry to close it and press herself against the Camaro when another car speeds by down the road. Her heart gets caught in her throat, but the sound of Billy retching gets her moving again. 

He’s on his knees on the gravel, and Robin crouchesdown beside him, pulling his hair away from his face again like she did when he was sick. It’s so eerily similar, their poses almost the same, and yet it’s so different. They’re not in school, they’re out on the ground at almost midnight and an actual policeman drugged Billy and tried to take him with him. Robin can’t help it when she starts crying. She strokes Billy’s hair, and he falls back against her. 

It seems to have sucked the last of his energy out of him. Robin barely manages to get him back into the car, and once inside his head lolls against the window. She doesn’t know if he’s still conscious. 

She parks as close to the entrance to her building as possible, and runs out of the car and up the stairs. If she has to wait for the lift, she thinks she’ll go insane. 

Her hands shake so bad she has to try four times before she gets her key in and manages to throw open the front door. 

“Dad!  _ Dad!  _ Help!” 

She hears movement from deeper in the flat, and her dad emerges, almost running and looking half awake. “What’s going on, Robbie?” 

“You have to help me with Billy! He’s outside, in his car,” Robin says as Pierre starts pulling on his shoes. He’s dressed in pyjama pants and a t-shirt.

“What happened?” 

Robin’s already halfway down the first set of stairs. “A fucking cop drugged him!” Belatedly, she hopes her neighbours don’t wake up. She doesn’t want to have to explain to them what’s going on. 

She’s got the door to Billy’s side open, and is trying to get him to focus on her, when Pierre comes out. He puts a hand on her shoulder and glances down at Billy, at Robin’s tearstained face. 

“You sure he doesn’t need a hospital?” 

Robin shakes her head. “No, no, the bartender told me he would be fine. I just had to bring him somewhere safe to sleep it off. And I- I don’t want him... I can’t have him out of my sight, I-“ she starts, before her dad can suggest driving him home. 

But he just moves his hand to stroke her hair. “I understand, Robbie. Go call the lift, I’ll come back with him.”

“Thanks, dad,” Robin whispers, and hates how tiny and weak her voice sounds. 

She stands up, brushes dirt off her knees, and goes back into the building to call for the lift. About a minute later, her dad comes back, carrying Billy, one arm underneath his knees and the other around his back. 

He puts him on Robin’s bed, leaves a plastic bucket in case he’ll need to vomit again, and hugs Robin tight, kissing the top of her head. 

Robin wakes up throughout the night, nightmares of that policeman and what he almost could have done - and what he did do - clouding her mind. Each time, she cries a little, squeezes Billy’s arm and pulls him closer to her, clasping his hand in hers. 

—

She wakes up early the next morning, before both Billy and her dad. She makes sure Billy’s still breathing before standing up and wandering over to her desk, scribbling down a note for her dad that she then puts on the kitchen table. 

It seems to be a slow morning at the station when Robin gets there, no other civilians there yet. She steps up to the receptionist, an older woman with glasses. “I need to speak with Chief Hopper.”

The woman stands up, turns around and slides a glass window separating her cubicle and the inner part of the station open. “ _ Jim! _ ” she shouts. “There’s a girl here to see you!” She slides it closed again, and turns back to Robin, gesturing her further in. 

Robin stays where she is for a second. “The... The officer with a moustache, is he in yet?” 

“Sweetheart, half the officers have moustaches. In you go.”

Robin steels herself before stepping into the precinct. The Chief’s leaning against a table, waiting for her. Robin scans the faces around them as she walks up to him, and breathes a sigh of relief that she doesn’t see the face she’d been dreading. 

“I need to speak to you. Privately,” she tells him, and sees him furrow his eyebrows. She can feel the gazes of everyone else in the room, knows what they think must have happened to her. She knows what she looks like, her appearance haggard with dark circles under her eyes from a mix of smeared makeup and a lack of sleep the night before. 

But Hopper doesn’t say anything, he just gets up and leads Robin into his office. She takes a seat opposite him, his desk between them. 

“There’s a few things I need to know, before I say anything,” Robin starts. 

Hopper leans back in his chair, and makes a sweeping motion with his hand.  _ Go ahead .  _

Robin swallows, and takes a deep breath before speaking. “Okay, so, first, what are your thoughts on homosexuality?”

Hopper frowns. He seems taken off guard by the question. “I... I don’t really care?” 

Robin shakes her head. “Not good enough. Do you believe they deserve to be assaulted? That it’s a choice they make?”

“No.” Hopper seems shocked, and worried. “No, of course not, to both of those things.”

Robin lets out a breath.  _So far, so good_. “Okay. Great. Now, are you one of those cops who’ll clap their buddies on the back, and tell them to be more careful next time, or are you one who’ll actually arrest them?” 

Hopper leans forward, his arms coming to rest on the desk. “Kid, what happened?” 

“Answer the question, Chief.” 

“I’ll arrest them. Of course I’ll arrest them. I might punch them first, but I’ll arrest them.”

Robin smiles, a sad little thing. “Do you know the club, the one off the highway?” 

He nods, and Robin sees understanding flare in his eyes. He reaches for a pen, gets out a some sort of paper, or form of some sort. Once he looks ready to write, Robin speaks again. 

“One of your officers tried to rape my best friend,” she says, and hears the sound of the tip of Hopper’s pencil break. He grabs a new one, a pen this time. “We go to the Club, and a couple weeks ago he stopped us, and he... I think he wanted to do something with me, but Billy, he stepped in, and he went with him instead, and then last night the cop came to the club and put something in Billy’s drink and drugged him.” 

“You got anyone to collaborate your story?” 

Robin feels her temper heat up. “You think I’d lie about this? That I would- That I’d make up a story about how we’re queer in a small fucking town?”

Hopper looks up at her, and there’s sympathy in his gaze. “No, but I need more than just your word.” 

Robin sighs. “The bartender, and a drag queen that came to get me. They threw him out of the club, but I don’t know who exactly. And Billy, obviously. My dad, too.” 

“Okay, and you say that this policeman put something in Billy’s drink? Did you actually see him do it? Did anyone see him?” 

“No, I- I don’t know. I was dancing, and the drag queen came to get me, and the bartender was talking to Billy, but he was... he was all out of it. And the bartender told me a thirty-something man has tried to get Billy to go with him, and I asked him what he looked like and it matched the cop who stopped us.” 

“He couldn’t have been trying to help Billy?” 

“Quite frankly, Chief, he already made Billy go with him and suck him off or something, so I doubt he wouldn’t have been trying to do something worse this time.” 

Hopper’s looking a little pale. He holds up his hands. “Just trying to check all possible avenues. You’re accusing a member of my force, and that’s a pretty serious thing. If it’s true, then I don’t want him here anymore, but if it turns out you’re wrong then I don’t want to have messed up an innocent man’s life in vain.” 

“He’s not innocent,” Robin says between clenched teeth. “And I don’t want him out there, in a fucking cop car, and using his power to hurt my friends and others like us.” 

Hopper sighs. “What did he look like?”

“Tall, lanky, a big brown moustache.” 

Hopper frowns. “Think you’d be able to point him out to me? He here now?” 

Robin shakes her head. “Not when I came in. But yeah, if you have a picture, then yeah.” 

Hopper stands up and gets out something of a catalogue from a bookcase filled to the brim with papers and folders. He hands it to Robin and sits back down. 

There’s photographs of everyone working at the station, and Robin has to get to the last page, panic steadily building for every page she turns without seeing the man, until finally, she finds him. 

“‘Officer Jameson’,” she reads aloud, and hands it back with the correct page open. 

Hopper frowns down at the picture. “He just started working here a few months back. Okay. I’ll see what I can do, but I really need to speak to Billy as well. Jameson’s not working today, so do you think you can get Billy to come down? Is he... Is he doing okay?”

Robin nods. “Yeah. He was asleep when I left.” At Hopper’s confused look, she explains; “We took the Camaro, so I drove him to my place.” 

Hopper frowns, sits up a little straighter. “Wait- Billy Hargrove?” Something comes over the Chief’s face, and Robin’s afraid he’s going to tell her to piss off. That for all his talk of arresting the bad guys no matter who they are, he’s going to decide that Billy, the asshole with a too loud car, is not worth the trouble of dealing with his own people. 

Still, she answers. “... Yes. Why?” 

Hopper shakes his head. “Nothing. Just. He’s the new kid from California, isn’t he? The one who moved her a few months ago?” 

“Yeah,” Robin says. 

“Okay. I’ll do my best, kid, alright? You see if you can get Billy to come down, and I’ll try to track down that bartender.” 

—

Billy’s awake when she gets home. 

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, his hands around a mug of coffee, and while his expressions blank, his eyes hold so much anger and betrayal it makes Robin stop and stand still. 

“I saw your note. You and the Chief have a good talk? What did you tell him, Rob?” His voice sounds cold in a way it’s never done before, and exhausted. 

“I didn’t- Billy, I didn’t tell him about your dad. I told him what happened last night. About the cop.”

“Why?” 

“‘Wh-  _ Why’ _ ? Because I don’t want him to fucking do it again, why do you think?” 

Billy glances down at his mug. “You had no fucking right, Rob,” he whispers. 

“You’re my best friend, Billy.”

“Yeah, well,” he laughs, but it sounds so... so dead, it makes Robin shiver. He stands up. “One would have thought that you’d fucking talk to me first, huh? That you’d  _ think _ about how my fucking  _ dad _ would react when he finds out I got fucking taken advantage of by a _cop_! That I went to a goddamn  _ Gay Club _ , and danced the night away with all the other little fags!” 

Robin feels like he’s slapped her. Distantly, she hears the bathroom door open, hears her dad make his way down the corridor to his own room. Billy brushes past her, and Robin lets him. It isn’t until she hears him pulling on shoes that she reacts, and rushes after him into the hallway. 

“Billy, wait, I-“ 

“Fuck off, Buckley!”  _‘Buckley’_. “Fuck off! I’m going home, and you can call the Chief and tell him that you made it up, or something, I don’t fucking care anymore, okay?!” He straightens up, turns around and unlocks the front door. 

Robin reaches out and grands his arm. He wrenches it free from her grasp, and when he turns around Robin can see he’s got angry tears falling from his eyes. 

“Don’t fucking  _ touch me! _ ” He pulls the door open, and slams it behind him. 

“I’m sorry,” Robin whispers, and stumbles backwards until she hits the fall. She glides down it, and pulls her knees up to her chest. She’s sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Billy, I’m sorry...” I thought I was helping. I just wanted to help you. 

Her dad finds her there, a minute later, and holds her close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that one also ended with crying. Oops? Maybe that should be a theme. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Please leave kudos if you liked it, or a comment to tell me what you thought! 
> 
> Also, IMPORTANT Note/Question:   
> I can’t decide if I should include the Mindflayer and make my own version of Season 3, or if I should just ignore that entire thing. If I start incorporating season 3, it would be in Chapter 4. Please tell me what you guys find the most interesting to read!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third chapter! I hope you guys like it! 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING:  
> Neil scars Billy’s face in this one. 
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> I don’t own “Stranger Things”.

Two weeks go by. 

Two weeks, and Billy doesn’t speak to her. Doesn’t even acknowledge her existence. Robin’s pretty sure he even actively avoids her in school, because she only ever sees him in the classes they share. 

Three days in, and the whole school seems to have caught on. Robin’s been hovering in a state in between popularity and insignificance, and without Billy she’s easily thrust back to the lower ranks of high school social hierarchy. But somehow, at the same time, her name seems to be on everybody’s lips. 

Not that Robin really cares, either way. It’s easy to skip back in among her fellow band nerds, but sitting with them at lunch, walking with to class, doesn’t fill her with the type of happiness it did before. 

Robin used to be content, the way her life was. But now she’s bored. She’s bored, and sad, and guilty and desperate and a little angry. Because Billy came into her life with blood and laughter and freedom and understanding, and now he’s gone all because Robin tried to keep him from getting hurt. 

She misses her best friend. 

And she hates him, a little. But she loves him more. 

—

Billy finds her at the Quarry. 

Robin doesn’t know if he’d been looking for her, or if he’d simply gotten in his car to escape his dad. 

She doesn’t really care, either way. It’s not important. 

What’s important is that Billy sees her motorcycle parked at what she’s come to think of as their spot, and he doesn’t turn the Camaro around and drive away. 

He parks it, a little bit away from her bike, and he gets out. 

It’s raining, heavy, fat drops hammering down on the earth and soaking her clothes, but Robin doesn’t really care. Her hair hangs in wet ringlets, plastered to her cheeks and forehead, and during the time it takes Billy to walk up and stop a few feet away from her, overlooking the water far below, the rain has started to do the same to his curls. 

Robin wonders if it’ll be frizzy, once it’s dried. 

“What if we just left?” Billy asks, as though nothing’s changed, as though he hasn’t been ignoring her for two weeks while she’s been too afraid to seek him out. 

He’s still not looking at her, eyes focused on a point across the gap of the Quarry. There’s only trees there. 

“What?” 

Billy sighs, as though he’s irritated at her. As though she’s not getting something that should be obvious. “I told you I wanted to show you the ocean. Cali.” He turns to look at her, and Robin can’t be certain with the rain, but she thinks he’s crying. “What if we just got in the car and left?” There’s a weariness in his tone Robin doesn’t think she’s ever really heard from him. 

Something fragile hangs in the air between them, pouring down with the rain. It’s in the way that he looks at her, like he’s expecting rejection but holding out for hope, and Robin gets the feeling she only gets one chance here to say the right thing, and what she chooses will have a major impact on the future of their friendship. 

She doesn’t say anything. 

She marches up to him, and throws her arms around his neck, and burrows her face in his wet curls. 

He follows her home in the Camaro, and her dad makes them hot chocolate and bakes them cookies while they take turns to use the shower. The three of them watch a movie, and she falls asleep next to Billy on the couch. 

—

Later, less than two weeks later, Robin will wonder if she made the right choice. 

— 

They start hanging out in Robin’s bedroom again, and go to the library to do their homework, and soon the hottest gossip is rumours on how Billy Hargrove and Robin Buckley made up. 

They don’t go back to the club, but they do get out on the highway. Especially when it rains. They will speed down the road and pull off to the side of it and stand there with their arms outstretched while the rain pours. 

It’s spring, and night, and there’s something special about the smell at night. The smell of the earth after rain. It’s beautiful, in a strange, urban sort of way.

Robin watches the glistening reflection of the street lights in the wet asphalt, and sings along to Billy’s music and screams her feelings out into the dark. Billy reaches for her hand, and joins in. 

—

Robin’s watching TV when the sound of the intercom down by the front door of the building buzzes and rings out throughout the flat. 

Her dad’s at work, and Billy hadn’t been able to come over after school. 

She turns off the TV, and goes out to the hallway to answer. 

“Hello?” she says, but there’s no answer. At first she thinks someone must have buzzed for the wrong name, and is too embarrassed to say anything. But then she hears heavy breathing on the other end, and a chill runs through her. 

She glances at the clock on the wall, and sees that it’s nine o’clock in the evening. There’s only one person who’s ever come looking for her at this time. 

“Billy?” she says, and hears the breaths hitch. Still no words, though, and Robin’s not an idiot, so she steps into the kitchen and looks out the window. 

She can’t see the Camaro, so she opens it and leans her head out, and angling it to the side, she thinks she can just make out a sleeve of a jean jacket and curly blonde hair leaning against the wall by the door. 

Reassured, she goes back to the hallway, pulls on her shoes and doesn’t bother locking the door behind her. 

The sun started setting a while ago, and the sky’s still painted in orange and deep purple mixing with dark blue where the night’s starting to creep in. 

Billy’s moves a little, leaning against the wall of the building at the edge of the circle of light from the lamp above the door. He’s stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and is staring down at the ground. But Robin gets the feeling he’s not looking at anything. 

She can’t explain the feeling she gets, seeing him, but it’s foreboding. Like some instinct in her is telling her to turn around and go back to the warmth of her living room. 

Robin ignores it, and walks up to him. She reaches a hand out, places it on his arm to turn him towards her, but he flinches. Robin pulls her hand back, as if burned. 

“Billy?” 

He doesn’t answer, makes no sign to signal he’s even heard her. Robin steps closer, bends her legs a little to be able to better see his face, and gasps once she does.

His whole face is bloody. He looks like he’s stepped off the set of a horror movie. It’s half dried, having dripped down his neck. 

She has to step back a little, her breaths coming quicker. 

But then Billy’s toppling forward, his legs having gone out form under him, and Robin rushes to catch him. He’s too heavy for her to hold up, but she manages to lower the two of them to the ground gently.

His head falls forward, coming to rest on her shoulder, and Robin reaches up, carding her fingers through his hair. She doesn’t realise she’s crying until she starts speaking, and her voice breaks on the first word. 

“Billy? Billy, what happened?” 

He’s still not saying anything; Robin can’t feel his lips moving against her collarbone. She moves one arm to press him closer to her, but stops when he whimpers. He’s hurt worse, hurt somewhere else than just his face, and Robin chokes on a sob. 

“Please talk to me,” she whispers, but he still doesn’t react. He’s taking measures breathes, and Robin wonders if he even can talk right now. 

It feels like she’s holding a spectre in her arms, and he’s so close to slipping through her grip. She lifts her head, glances around them desperately. 

The Camaro’s still nowhere in sight, and Robin realises with a start that he’s walked all the way to her. 

She leans him back against the wall, and stands up, goes over to her motorcycle, and gets out both helmets. 

She knows it’s irrational, and she should call an ambulance, but it’s dark out, and Robin is convinced that if she leaves him, for even a second, he’ll be gone when she turns back. Like a reverse Orpheus and Eurydice, and god if there isn’t some irony in that. 

So instead, she puts the helmet she’s starting to think of as Billy’s over his head, and helps him up. He’s not looking at her. He’s not looking at anything. 

They stumble over to her bike, and she helps him up before sitting down in front of him, taking his hands in hers to make sure he’s holding tight to her waist before she dares start driving. 

The motorcycle’s a steady rumble beneath her as she pulls away from her parking slot and drives them towards the hospital. She has to keep herself from moving her hands to place them over Billy’s. She’s just so fucking afraid he’ll pass out and lose his hold and fall off. 

But thankfully he doesn’t, and she doesn’t feel his grip slacken until she’s parked them outside the ER. She gets off first, and Billy almost slides to the ground, leaning back against the bike. Robin pulls her own helmet off first, then his, and starts to blink back tears when she realises he’s closed both eyes, one partly open. The other eyelid is caked in blood. 

She still doesn’t want to let him go, doesn’t want to let him out if her eyesight, but she can’t very well sit out here and scream until someone hears them. 

She’s aware of the slightly hysterical quality of her voice when she rushes in and grabs the first person she sees who looks like they work there. “Please, please, my friend, he’s passed out and needs help, I-“ 

The man nods at her, and gets a group of people to follow after her. They roll a stretcher out between them, and Robin can feel their shock when they see Billy. They lift him up on it, and ask her for his name, and Robin keeps up with them until they get to a door and she’s told she can’t go further. 

She’s got fresh tears running down her cheeks when she locates the phone in a corner of the waiting area, and calls her dad’s restaurant. 

The girl on the other end has barely managed to welcome her to ‘Hawkins one and only French restaurant’ in a cheery voice and ask her for when she wants to book a table, before Robin’s interrupting her with a shaky voice. 

“I’m Pierre’s daughter. Please, can I- Can I speak to my dad?” 

_“I’ll check,”_ she says in a gentle voice, and less than a minute later she’s back. _“I’m sorry, Robin, is it? He’s busy, but he said he’ll call you in-“_

Robi sobs. “Can you tell him I’m at the hospital. I’m fine, but Billy’s... Billy’s not. And I need him here. I don’t know what to do.” 

There’s a shocked silence on the other end. Then: _“Okay. Okay, yeah. I can do that.”_

She’s about to hang up, when the girl continues. _“Robin?”_

“Yeah?” 

_ “Everything will be alright. I’ll go talk to your dad, now.”  _

“Okay,” Robin says, and hates how tiny her voice sounds. “Thank you.” 

She slumps down in a chair by the waiting area, and a nurse comes up to her. Robin sits up straighter, and hopes it isn’t news about Billy, because it hasn’t been long and news this early are never good news. 

But the nurse just looks at her gently and gives her a small smile. She hands her a rag, and motions at Robin’s neck. And Robin doesn’t really get what she means, but she follows the nurse to a bathroom, and pulls in a harsh breath when she sees herself in the mirror.

Her hair’s a ruffled, tangled mess, and she’s got dried blood coating her neck. 

_Billy’s_ blood. 

Her hands shake so hard she almost looses the grip she’s got on the rag, and she stumbles to the sink, suddenly desperate to get it off. 

It doesn’t come off completely, and she scrubs so hard her skin turns red. Her breaths come in wheezes, and her tears turn her sight blurry. She falls to the floor, the water still running, and lets herself break down a little. She can’t stop thinking about when she’d told Billy how to get blood out of his clothes, and comparing it to how he’d been tonight, and comparing that silent Billy who seemed more like a shell than a person to the Billy she’d laughed with at lunch earlier today. He’d still come to her. He’d pulled his broken body up and had walked to her place, trusting her to help him.

Robin thinks he spends at least ten minutes in there before she pulls herself together a little, splashing water into her face and trying to smooth down her hair. 

She walks back to the waiting are, and slumps into one of the hard plastic chairs. 

Robin’s not certain how much later it is that she hears her dad’s voice calling her name, and sits up a little straighter. 

She doesn’t realise that Hopper’s there until after her dad has crouched down in front of her, and she’s thrown herself into his arms with a cry of _“Dad!”_ and he’s hugged her tight for about a minute. The Chief makes his presence known by clearing his throat, and Pierre pulls back. He takes Robin’s trembling hands in his as she glances back and forth between them. 

“Robbie? Did Billy’s father do this to him?”

“I...” She swallows, looks to her dad. “I don’t know. He didn’t- I wasn’t supposed to say anything.” She turns to Hopper. “He said you wouldn’t do anything. I think he might’ve tried, back in California. I think he gave up on anyone helping him.” 

“He’s in the hospital, Robin,” Hopper says, as though she needs a reminder. 

Robin sniffles, and lets out a sound between a chuckle and a sob. She’s still got the rag, red with Billy’s blood now, on the seat beside her. Her dad squeezes her hands. “You did good, Robbie. Everything’s going to be okay now.” 

“I’m going to go- See if I can find a nurse to speak to,” Hopper says, and leaves them. 

Pierre moves to sit beside her, and Robin leans to the side and rests her head against his shoulder. She’s exhausted, and worried, and so glad she’s not alone here anymore, but has adults to deal with all the fucking shit that’s been going on. 

She doesn’t speak, and her dad doesn’t ask her anything else. She’s a little afraid he’ll tell her they aught to go home, but he doesn’t. 

A little past midnight, a nurse finds them. 

Robin looks up, hopeful. “Billy?” she asks, the first word she’s said in over an hour. 

The nurse smiles reassuringly. “He’s going to be okay.” She takes in a deep breath, sighs a little. “The Chief told me the situation. And since I’m not about the let his family, and you’re the one who came in with him and have been waiting here this long, I think it’s only right you get to see him.” 

Robin feels like crying again. “Can I come now?” 

“Yeah, sweetie.” She smiles again. It’s sweet, and kind, and gentle. “Come with me.” 

Robin stands up, feels her dad stop her with a hand on her arm. “You want me to come with?” 

Robin shakes her head. “I’m okay. I’ll be out soon.” 

“I’ll wait.” 

When she gets to Billy’s room, she takes a second to prepare herself. He’d looked bad last she saw him, and she doesn’t know what state to expect him to be in. 

‘It could have been worse’ is all Robin can think when she first lays eyes on him. He’s breathing on his own, and she can’t see any casts anywhere. But he’s got an IV-line, and there’s beeping from the machines in the room, and as she steps closer she can see bruises all over his arms. They’ve pulled the covers up to his chest, so Robin can’t see what damage lies hidden beneath it. 

They’ve cleaned the blood off of him, and yet the worst thing, by far, is his face. They’ve taped bandages, or gauze, or something, from above his left eyebrow down over the bridge of his nose and right cheek. 

Robin sits down in the chair by his bed, and takes his hand in hers. “God, Billy, your face,” she sighs, because she knows Billy won’t like it when he finds out. 

“Rob?” comes a quiet mumble. 

“Billy?” She hadn’t realised he was awake, hadn’t seen his lips move. 

His eyes open to thin slits, and his whole face screws up at the glare of the lights. “‘M tired,” he whispers. 

Robin rubs her thumb over his hand. “Sleep.” 

“Come back t’morrow?”

She smiles a little, glad to hear his voice again. “Yeah. Of course.” 

“Love you.” 

Robin feels her eyes widen and a few more tears slip out. “I love you too, you fucking asshole.” 

A smile pulls at his lips, but then he winches, and Robin squeezes his hand.

“Go back to sleep, Billy.” 

“Yes, mum.” 

She laughs, and is still smiling when she stands up and leaves his room. 

—

On the ride back home in her dad’s car, Pierre tells her why the Chief came with him. It turns out he’d been suspicious of Billy’s home life for weeks, and had gone to Hopper with his worries. They’d come to the decision that her dad would call him the next time he suspected something had happened. 

Robin asks why he didn’t say anything, and he tells her he didn’t want to worry her if he was wrong, and I’d he wasn’t, then he didn’t want Billy to get mad at her in case he didn’t want her or anyone else to know. 

He wasn’t wrong about that part, at least. 

—

The next couple of days pass in a bit of a blur. Robin isn’t certain she understands all that happens, and she’s kind of glad she doesn’t have to. She’s happy letting the Chief and her dad and the doctors and nurses and whoever else it is that needs to be involved deal with it. 

Billy’s more awake the next morning, and Robin spends an hour with him before the Chief knocks on the door. Robin can see a little redhead standing behind him, shifting. 

“Max wants to see you, kid,” Hopper says, and Robin looks to Billy with a question I’m her gaze. 

He shakes his head, letting her know she can leave the two of them alone, and Robin squeezes his hand before standing up and stepping past Hopper. Max is staring at her feet. 

There’s a bench in the corridor outside that she takes a seat on, and twenty minutes after he’s left Max with Billy, Hopper’s back with another man in tow. He’s not dressed like Hopper, doesn’t look like a police officer. Or a doctor or nurse, for that matter. 

Hopper knocks, opens the door and goes to stand in the doorway. He says something Robin doesn’t hear, and the man he’s with gives Robin a small smile. A second later, Max comes out, and the man and Hopper step inside, the door closing behind them. 

“CPS,” Max explains at Robin’s questioning glance after them. 

From what Robin knows of Max, she’s figured out she’s a pretty tough girl, but standing outside her brother’s hospital room, staring forlornly at the ground, she’s looking a bit like she’s blinking back tears. 

“Max,” Robin says, and opens her arms just as Max turns to look up at her again. 

She only hesitates for a second before she’s throwing herself into Robin’s arms, much the same way Robin had done to her dad last night. Robin spares a second to wonder where her mother is, before reaching up with her hands to stroke Max’ hair. Her shirt’s growing wet where the girl’s pressing her face into it. 

Robin thinks that this must be one of - if not  _ the _ \- worst time Billy’s been hurt. His dad’s never left an injury that will be su apparent, that will scar Billy’s  face , before. She hadn’t dared ask about it, but she could tell from just his expression that it hurt him, more than just physically. Robin’s a little afraid of what people will say, what the reactions at school will be. She’s not ashamed of him, not in any way, but she’s kind of scared that Billy will be. That he might put his fist in somebody’s face after one stare too many. 

— 

Somebody must have called the school, because none of their teachers or the teachers of the classes they don’t share is shocked when Robin comes up to them asking for Billy’s homework. Some of them have even prepared it already, ready to hand it over. A few ask how he’s doing. One asks her to tell him not to worry, that he doesn’t have to do that week’s work at all. 

—

She doesn’t know how it happens, exactly, but she’s happy with the result. Neil Hargrove’s going on trial in three weeks, and Billy’s staying with her and her dad until then. 

—

He gets nightmares almost every night. Pierre’s put in two extra mattresses, on top of each other, in her room, and Robin insists on Billy taking the bed. When Billy whimpers in his sleep, and twists and turns, Robin reaches out and pulls herself closer. She holds his hand, and strokes his hair, and whispers in his ear that he’s safe, and when he wakes with a gasp she holds him until he calms done.

Most nights, he doesn’t say anything. One night, he’s crying as he speaks. 

“He broke a vase and- and he t-took a shard and held me down and cut my face open. God, Rob, I screamed so fucking loud. And he slapped me and told me my looks were the only thing I had going for me, and since I wasn’t pretty anymore no one would ever care what happened to me. No one would ever want me.” 

—

Billy waits until Friday before he goes back to school. Pierre lets him stay home. 

He’s trembling that Thursday night, and Robin caught him blinking back tears when he’d fingered at the stitches still on his face. 

“I’m just so fucking scared,” he whispers, as they lie awake in Robin’s bedroom. “I don’t want them to stare.”

Friday morning, Robin catches him trying to arrange his curl in a way that hides the still healing wound, not yet a scar, from view. It’s not working. It cuts through his face. Robin doesn’t say anything. 

—

And people do stare. 

They stare, with horror or pity or curiosity, and Robin sticks close to Billy’s side, and after those periods where they’ve had to be separated she always shoots a quick glance down at his hands to see if his knuckles are split yet. 

They never are. Robin would understand if they were. 

—

He cries a lot, when they get home. At school, he puts on a mask that makes it seem like he’s unaffected, like nothing bothers him and never could, but it’s not true. Robin’s just glad he doesn’t hide it from her. 

—

They go to the Quarry, and Robin drives them out on the highway or through Hawkins on her bike, late evenings spent speeding down empty streets, and they sit and watch the sunset on Robin’s roof. 

—

Billy’s lying on his back on Robin’s bed, his head hanging down the side. There’s a cigarette in his mouth, and he’s just lit it. Robin grumbles and swats the lighter out of his hand. 

“Don’t smoke in my bedroom. What will my dad say?” 

Billy grins around the cigarette between his lips. Robin’s glad to see him smiling more. “He’s nice. Just like you.”

Robin purses her lips. “I’m not that nice.” 

“Mhm. You are.” 

“I’ll go open a window.” 

—

Robin’s there when Billy trembles in Court. 

She can tell he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the way the sharp bright lights shine down upon his bruised and scarred skin and lights it up like a billboard. But she knows it’s necessary. Knows Billy would like to have clothes he could hide in, because that’s what he’s used to, but that is not the effect they want. They want everyone to know what Neil did to him, wants them to look and  _ see _ . See what they’ll condemn him to if this doesn’t go the way Robin wants it to go. 

Billy alternates between staring at his lap and staring right at the judge. His eyes never stray towards Neil. Robin wishes she knew what was going through his head.

They ask her to recount what happened, that night when Billy came to her, four weeks ago. And ask her about any other instances, when Robin suspects something might have happened. 

They ask Susan, and Max as well. And they show photographs, some taken at the hospital, and some that Robin finds out Max had sneakily taken without Billy’s knowledge in case they’d ever be needed. 

—

Afterwards, when all is said and done, they get in the Camaro and drive to the edge of the woods of Hawkins, where nobody lives and almost no one ever drives through. 

And Billy gets out, slams the door behind himself and looks a little like he’s about to throw up. 

The sun’s starting to set, painting the sky a rainbow of colours, and there’s birdsong coming from the trees. 

Robin gets out, sees Billy leaning against the side of the Camaro, and goes to stand beside him. His face is screwed up, like he’s got a headache, or is holding back tears. He reaches into the pockets of his jean jacket and gets out a pack of cigarettes, and his lighter. He puts one between his lips. 

Billy’s hands shake when he tries to light his cigarette. He tries once, twice, three times, before he huffs and throws both it, the pack, and the lighter to the ground. His hands are still shaking. 

Robin reaches down and picks his shit up for him. She lights a new cigarette and takes a drag, before handing it over to Billy. “Tell me about the ocean, Billy.” 

He laughs wetly, and talks about the sound of crashing waves and the freedom of being carried on something so wide and deep and beautiful. 

—

  
  


Susan gets custody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave kudos or comments to let me know what you thought! 
> 
> So I think the consensus is that I’m going to be incorporating Season 3 in this one, so that’ll start happening next chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re here! Final chapter, guys! To make up for how long it took me to get it out, it’s extra long, and I hope you guys like this ending! 
> 
> (There’s one thing you guys are going to realise pretty quickly, and that is that I might have found out that crop tops where really in fashion for men during the 80’s, and even started out as sports wear, my immediate thought being “Oh my god. Yes. YES.” And then while googling Billy’s necklace finding an article saying part of Billy’s wardrobe was supposed TO BE crop tops during season 3? I even found a close up on Tumblr of a photograph in which he’s wearing it in S3! The pure joy I felt.)
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING:  
> Some references to adults going after teenagers, wanting to have sex with them.  
> And eh... leg “surgery” while awake? (You guys remember the scene with El in the show). Also, descriptions of... sizzling flesh? Aka The pesky Mindflayer business.

Steve Harrington is more of a dork than Robin expected. 

She starts working at Scoops Ahoy as soon as summer break starts. And it is there, that she is first introduced to Harrington. Her only colleague. 

The asshole act seems to have calmed down some since his fall from grace. He spends the shifts being bitchy at Robin, and it’s fun. When he’s not trying to flirt with girls he’s acting like a second mum to a group of middle schoolers. One of them’s Billy’s sister. Yeah, it’s weird. Although Robin thinks they might be starting high school after the summer. Strange to think she’d be going to the same school as Steve’s children. 

She throws the rag she’d been using to clean up the counter at Steve, and he catches it even though he’s not paying attention. Basketball reflexes, Robin guesses. 

“Your turn to close up!” she says cheerfully. 

“No, hey- wait! I closed up yesterday!” He’s pouting at her. Actually pouting. He may be physically one year older than her, but right now Robin feels like he’s the same age as those kids he hangs out with. 

“Yeah, and I closed up two days in a row last week, when you wanted to go watch a movie with those children you hang out with. I’m leaving now, I’m meeting up with Billy.” She puts her helmet on the counter and heaves herself over it, landing gracefully on the other side. 

“Yeah, by the way, how did that happen?” 

“Well, you see, if you put your palms flat on the counter and use your muscles you’re able to-“ 

“No, not that. How come a girl like you started hanging out with someone like Hargrove?”

Robin thinks about Billy shaking in her arms, thinks about how Max got them walkie talkies and some nights Robin will wake up to the crackle and lie there in the dark of her bedroom listening to Billy’s sobs, and wishing he was still staying with her so she could comb her hand through his hair instead of just having to whisper gentle reassurances, and how she’s so afraid that there are nights when she doesn’t wake up, and Billy has to lie there all alone without anyone to comfort him, and how she wonders if Max hears, and wonders how she could decide to ignore it if she does. But she doesn’t say any of that to Steve. Instead, she looks at him, and sets her mouth. “Fuck you, Steve Harrington.” 

—

There’s a playground with a basketball court close to the woods, but this time of night, it’s usually abandoned. 

Billy’s brought a basketball, and he’s shooting hoops while Robin lies on the hood of his car, smoking. Billy’s brought a couple cans of shitty beer, and she’s got one balancing on her stomach. She’d gone home to change before meeting up with him, so she’s dressed in jean shorts and a flowery button up she’s tied at the waist. It makes a great stand for the beer to lean against as she breathes. 

Billy’s still got his lifeguard shorts on, but as spring turned to summer a new aspect of his wardrobe came to light that Robin hadn’t been expecting. Not that she’s that surprised Billy’s main summer clothing is made up of crop tops, constantly defying the Indiana weather, because it may be summer, but it’s not California. 

The sun’s setting, and a street light turns on. Something catches the light by Billy’s left ear and Robin’s a little drunk by know so she can’t stop herself from laughing as she realises something. 

“You know, I really should have figured it out.” 

Billy stops right as he’s about to shoot, looks to her and raises his eyebrows, and then shoots anyway, without looking. It goes through the hoop. “Figured what out?” 

“The earring.” Robin may be living in a small town in rural America, but Billy isn’t the first gay guy she’s met. Her dad even went with her to New York during Pride last year. 

Billy laughs. “Yeah. Sometimes I wish the women at the pool would get it, too.” He runs after the basketball, catches it, and throws it through the hoop again. 

Robin grimaces. “They’re still bothering you?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s great for my image and all, but it’s also... really fucking creepy.” He shoots her a grin, but Robin can read his eyes, and knows he means it. They’re classmates with Nancy and Michelle, and Robin knows both their mums are spending the summer staring at Billy. It gives her the creeps, too. Especially after what that fucking officer tried to do to Billy. 

“We should make a scene. I’ll come over and pull you into the supply closet, and we’ll pretend we’re having the most heated make out session of our lifetime. I’ll even bring lipstick, and we could smear it all over you.” 

Billy laughs. “My saviour. What would I do without you?” 

“You’d be miserable, that’s what. Drinking beer by yourself or being an arse with Carol and Tommy.” 

“You’re right. It’s way better drinking beer with you.” 

—

“Robin, about yesterday,” Steve says the next day. Robin’s been giving him the silent treatment for three hours by this point. “I didn’t mean it like that. Like what it sounded like.”

“What did you mean, then?” 

“I just- Hargrove was an asshole, but then he started hanging out with you and then that whole thing with his dad came out, and, well-“

“You pitying him? Because if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that Billy hates being pitied.” 

“No! No, I just... I don’t know.” The tips of his ears are red, the sailor’s hat pushing his hair away so Robin can see them. She wonders if Steve’s aware of it. He looks down at the ground, sheepish. “Never mind. Hand me the bucket, it’s my turn to clean the floor.” 

And Robin frowns, stares at him a little longer. Something’s... off. Weird. 

It doesn’t really click until later, when Billy comes to pick her up for lunch. Robin’s out back, going through the freezer to get out a new box or peppermint ice cream. 

“Your boyfriend’s here!” Steve calls, and there it is again, that weird quality to his voice. 

Robin finds the box, and lifts it, kicking the door to the freezer closed. When she gets out to the front of the store, Billy’s standing there, leaning against the wall in a new crop top, with his arms crossed over his chest. He glances up at Robin as soon as she gets out, and misses the way Steve’s gaze shifts. Robin doesn’t miss it though. He’s staring at Billy’s abs, and his ears are turning red again.  _ Oh my god. _

—

“What do you think about Steve?” Robin asks. They’re sharing a pizza at the back of the mall, where the trucks come whenever there’s a new order for clothes or perfume or jewellery or toys. Or ice cream. 

“I think he lied to my face about Max’ whereabouts half a year ago, I think he’s shit at fighting, I mean, he lost against  _ Jonathan Byers_. I think he’s a glorified babysitter. I think it’s sad he’s only hanging out with middle schoolers and his old girlfriend and her new boyfriend.” 

“Right, okay. But do you think he’s hot?” 

Billy leans his head forward, tilting it to look at her with narrowed eyes. “Robin?”

“Do you?” 

“Doesn’t matter; he’s straight.”

She takes another bite of pizza. “But what if he isn’t?” 

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh come on. You can’t be that oblivious! He stared at you, Billy!”

He leans back against the wall, staring down at his lap, at the pizza carton resting on each of their legs. “Everybody stares at me.” 

From his tone of voice, Robin knows this isn’t about the staring those creepy women at the pool do. This is about his scar. It’s looking better than it did a month ago, becoming paler each day. A line across his face, separating it in two. Robin knows there’s nothing she can say to make him feel better about it that she hasn’t already said. 

“He was staring at your abs,” she says instead. “And he got embarrassed, when we talked about you. No, wait.  _ ‘Flustered’.  _ He got flustered.”

Billy chokes on a piece of pizza. Robin laughs as he starts coughing, before staring at her, mouth gaping. “‘ _Flustered’?!_ What the fuck, Rob?” 

“He did!”

“You’re so full of shit.” 

“No, I mean it! And he sounded  _ jealous _ when he called you my boyfriend!” 

Billy laughs now, bending at the middle so his shirt flutters inches from the greasy pizza carton. “Maybe he wasn’t jealous of you for ‘dating’ me. Maybe he was jealous _of_ _ me_.” 

Robin honestly hadn’t considered that. She doesn’t believe it’s true, either. “But I mess with him every day.” 

“Yeah, but that’s just your personality.”

She scoffs and hits him, gently, in the shoulder. Billy laughs harder, taking the last piece of pizza and tearing it in half, holding out on end to her.

“I think Steve Harrington has amazing hair.” 

Robin knocks her pizza against his, in a mock toast. “To Steve Harrington’s stupid, amazing hair. May it never stop growing.” 

—

Billy wants to turn it into a competition, because of course he does, to see which one of them can be the first to get Steve to fall, but Robin has a better idea. Besides, she feels like Steve’s probably so desperate for a date that he’d say yes to the first person asking him out, no matter who it was. 

She’s sitting on the counter, dangling her feet back and forth and hitting the cupboards with her heels. The mall’s about to open in a couple minutes. 

“Stevie,” she says. “Do you like me?” 

He’s got his back to her, crouching down with his head halfway inside one of the cabinets, rummaging around for new toppings. “I mean, you’re a bit of a bitch, but sure.”

“Thank you, and I think the same of you, but I meant romantically, dingus. Are you, like,  _ sexually attracted _ to me?” 

“What?” Steve says, his head shooting up so quickly he slams it into the roof of the cabinet. Robin does her best to muffle her laugh. Steve rubs at his head, at his squished hat. At least it and his enormous amount of hair must’ve protected him somewhat. “Ow. And no, then. I don’t like you. Why?” He stands up, turning around to look at her and frowning. “Do you-?” 

“Nope!” Robin says and hops off the counter. “I don’t like you either. Great.”

“Glad we got that out of the way,” Steve says, staring at her. 

—

“I’m pretty sure our Steven is bisexual,” she reports to Billy later that day, at the Quarry, the sun glaring down at them through the trees. “I’m also pretty sure he’s too oblivious to have noticed. But he doesn’t like me.”

“You asked him?” Billy says. He’s leaning back against the windshield of the Camaro, sunglasses on, and Robin with her head in his lap.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Jesus, Rob.” 

She laughs. “Time to shoot your shot, hotshot. You might score.”

—

It takes a week, but then one afternoon she sees Billy stride purposefully into Scoops Ahoy. Steve sees him, too, turning around to face Robin. She’s sitting on the back counter again, leaning against the wall and reading. 

“Hargrove’s-“

“You do it, I’m on break.” 

“But he’s your-“

She waves her hand in his face, not glancing up from her novel. “Break.” 

But she does look up to shoot Billy a grin when he gets up to them. Steve’s staring, again, his ears already heating up. It’s adorable. 

“Flavour?” Steve asks. 

“Strawberry,” Bily says, smiling widely. 

“Basic.”

“I’m anything but basic, Harrington.” 

Robin has to bite her lip to keep from laughing as Steve scoops up some ice cream for him. He hands it over, and Billy makes sure to hold eye contact while he slowly licks the first layer off. Steve’s cheeks are red. And Robin needs them to stop, because it’s getting hard to breathe from the way she has to hold herself from bursting out laughing. 

Billy pays, and Robin jumps of the counter, going around Steve to grab Billy’s hand and walk out of there with him, barely keeping herself from running. 

They stop around the corner, and Robin finally lets herself laugh. “You see what I mean?” 

Billy grins. “You might’ve had a point,” he says, and takes another lick of his ice cream. 

“I think there’s other things he’d rather have you lick.”

Billy bursts out laughing. Robin’s so used of him being sad, it’s makes her whole heart feel full hearing him so happy. “I didn’t know you were so dirty, Rob!”

“Please, you’ve always known I wasn’t any kind of lady! I’m not Nancy Wheeler.” 

“You’re not  _ Karen _ Wheeler, either.” 

“And thank god for that!” 

—

“Spit it out, Stevie, I can tell you have something to say.” It’s two days later, and Steve’s been in a daze since Billy came and bought that ice cream. 

“Are you aware that your boyfriend’s gay?”

Robin just raises her eyebrows. They’re closing up, so at least no one can hear him. Steve’s doesn’t really seem to know what inside voices are.

“He was flirting with me, and you were right there-“ 

“Would you have preferred it if I was out in the back? Besides, I think you were flirting just as much.” 

“What? No, I-“ His cheeks are flushing again. 

“Steve,” Robin stops him. “Are you aware I’m a lesbian?”

That brings him to a halt. “What? But... So this whole thing... with you and Billy...it was just a sham?”

“It’s called being a beard, but yeah. We’re  _ each other’s _ beards. Everyone thought we were dating, so why argue against it? He’s my best friend and I love him, but not like that.” She grins. “So yep, he’s available. You can ask him out. I have a feeling he’d say yes.” 

“What? Robin-“

“Spare me the bullshit, Steve. I know this language.” 

—

The last day of June is the strangest day Robin’s ever had. There are  _ Russians_, in  _ Hawkins_, sending  _ coded messages_, and Steve’s favorite child managed to intercept one such message through a  _ radio tower he built by himself at camp_. 

_ What the fuck?  _

Part of her feels ready to crash, when she gets home, but Billy’s coming over for a sleepover and she really wants to tell him everything. 

Ten minutes past the time they were supposed to meet, and Robin thinks he’s just running a little late. 

Twenty minutes, and she’s getting worried.

Thirty, and she’s almost ready to jump on her bike and go looking for him. 

Forty minutes past the time they were supposed to meet, the phone rings. 

Robin’s out of the seat she’d taken on the couch, worrying her bottom lip while she watched the clock tick by, and at the phone in an instant. 

“Hello?” 

_“Rob,”_ Billy gasps on the other side. _“There’s- There’s something- Something happened, fuck, shit, something took me, Rob, Rob-!”_ The sound cuts out, a crackle of electricity going from the phone to her hand. She drops it with a curse, her hand stinging, and when she picks it back up there’s only white noise. 

Robin slams it back down and turns to grab her leather jacket, pulling on shoes and taking her helmet, quickly locking the door behind her. 

She throws herself onto her bike and quickly pulls the helmet on, before starting it and speeding away.

Since he started working at the pool, Billy usually takes a shortcut, an old road through the woods almost no one ever uses. There’s just an abandoned steel mill there, a place that’s always given her the creeps. 

But now she steels herself and sets out on it. She barely spares it a glance as she flies by past it, just to make sure the Camaro’s not there. 

It isn’t, it’s parked haphazardly at the side of the road up ahead. Robin hastily parks and gets of her bike, throwing her helmet to the ground. 

“ _ Billy! _ ”

He doesn’t answer her, but Robin does hear him. She follows the sound to a phone booth, and finds Billy, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and hands in his hair, a couple feet away from it. 

Robin kneels down in front of him, not caring that the gravel presses into her legs. His face is flecked with blood, trailing down from a spot up above his eyebrow. She’s feeling ill with déjà vu. “Billy?”

“I don’t understand, I don’t- I don’t understand, _ I don’t understand_...” He’s just muttering it to himself, repeating the same words again and again. Robin doesn’t think he’s even aware she’s there. 

“Billy?” she says, reaching out and shaking his shoulders. 

His eyes snap to hers. “Robin,” he breathes, and she feels like crying. “He wants  _ to build_.” 

“I don’t-“ she stops herself, realising she’s about to say the same thing he did, and not wanting to bring him back to it. “What do you mean, Billy? What happened? Did someone- Did someone do this to you?” 

“ _He _ did.” 

Horror dawns on her. “Officer Jameson?” 

“No, no, Robin, he... He- The monster-“ and he promptly turns his head to the side and vomits. 

“Shit, Billy!” She takes his hair and holds it out of the way, touching his cheeks in the process. He’s cold as ice. “Shit,” she says again, this time to herself. 

Billy convulses one more time, spitting the last bit of vomit out, and drags his hand across his mouth. 

Robin moves so she’s got her hands on the underside of his arms, starting to heave him up with her. “Come on, I’m taking you home.”  


He gets up with her, but immediately stumbles. Robin rearranged them so he’s got one arm across her shoulders. She didn’t bring his helmet, so she leads them to the Camaro, wrenching the passenger side door open and dumping Billy inside. She runs around it, seeing a buckle on the side and frowning - _What the hell happened here?_ \- before landing in the driver’s seat and stepping down on the gas pedal. 

It’s first once she’s parking outside her own building that she realises she’d taken him to her own home. Robin frowns as she looks at him. Billy’s eyes are closed, and he’s leaning against the window. 

When she taps at his arm, his eyes slowly open to blink blearily at her. He makes no move to get out, so Robin steps out first, rounding the car and opening his door. He tilts to the side, his support gone, but she’s there to catch him.

She helps him out and up to her flat, unlocking the door and leading him inside, down to sit on the closed toilet lid. It isn’t the first time that Robin’s gotten out a towel and wet it under the rushing water of the bathroom sink, only to lean down and clean his bloody face. 

“This really has to stop happening,” she says. _ I had hoped it would’ve stopped with your dad gone.  _

Billy gives her a weak smile. At least he seems more conscious, more aware, now. 

“Should I be taking you to the hospital?” 

Billy’s breath hitches. “No. No, he- The monster-“ 

“‘The monster’...?”

Billy shakes his head. “There were rats, and... I just want to sleep. Please, please, Robin, I just-“

She holds up her hands. “Okay. Okay. Tell me tomorrow?” 

“Yeah.”

She gets out a pair of her dad’s sweatpants, just like she’d done before. She tells him not to lock the door but leaves him in the bathroom to change, and when he gets out, shirtless, they walk together to her room. Robin turns her desk chair around to face the bed, and sits down in it. 

Billy stops in the middle of the room, turning back to look at her. 

“Go to bed,” she says. “I’m just... I’m just going to sit here, for a while.” 

Billy goes over and lies down in her bed, curling up pressed to the wall, turned on his side so she can see his face. 

Robin leans over to open her window, letting in the cool summer breeze. She sees it when Billy’s eyes flutter closed, and eventually, so does hers. 

—

When Robin wakes up, her neck hurts. 

She fell asleep in her chair. 

A glance at the bed, and she sees that Billy’s not there. She shouts up from the chair, suddenly wide awake. 

She steps out of her room, and breathes a sigh of relief when she finds Billy sitting by the table in the kitchen. 

That relief is quickly transformed into dread, though, as he doesn’t move muscle at seeing her. Doesn’t do anything to acknowledge her. He’s just staring straight ahead, eyes half closed, and head gently swaying.

“Billy?” She says, taking cautious steps closer. “Billy, can you hear me?” 

He’s sweating, she now notices. As though he’s run a marathon. The sun’s shining in through the kitchen windows, but it’s nowhere near hot enough for him to look like that. Robin glances down at his arm, laying in front of him on the table, in the sunlight, and feels sick. 

“Billy!” she shouts, rushing forward and dragging it back into the shade. There’s a red spot on his forearm, blistering and  _ bubbling_. 

Billy gasps when she touches him. He pushes the chair he’s on back, standing up and running out of the kitchen. 

Robin runs after him, all the way to the bathroom which he throws open, crashing into the shower and turning the water on to freezing. He’s still dressed in her dad’s sweatpants, but the legs ridden up, showing of a large fleshy wound, skin blistering there just like on his arm. 

“Too hot,” Billy gasps, but when Robin reaches out to pull the pant leg higher so she can get a better look, his skin is as ice cold as it’d been last night.

He flinches when she touches him, kicking his leg out so that Robin falls backwards and has to catch herself with her hands not to crack her head into the tiles. 

“Billy?” she says.  _ She’s so scared.  _

“Don’t- Robin, get away, he wants me to hurt you, Robin, _ I saw how I hurt you._” 

“Billy,” she says, and she’s crying now. “Billy, what’s going on? What happened last night?” 

But he just shakes his head. “ _Go_.  Please, Rob.  _ Please_,” he sobs. She didn’t notice when he’d started crying, his tears blending in with the water streaming from the shower head onto his face and torso. 

And Robin hates herself a little, but she does as she’s been asked, and gets up, closing the door behind her. 

The phone rings, and Robin doesn’t know what else to do so she goes up and answers. 

_“Robin?”_ Steve’s voice comes. He sounds irritated. 

“Yeah,” she sighs. 

_“I’ve called you four times! Do you have any idea what time it is?”_ Oh no, that’s his Mum Voice, the one he uses on the kids. Robin glances over at the clock.  _ Shit_. 

“After lunch.” 

_ “‘After lunch’. Yeah, it’s two in the goddamn afternoon. Where the hell have you been all day?” _

“Steve. I can’t-“ 

_ “You left me alone all morning! You know how many customers we get! What the fuck, Robin? And we need you to help with the code-“  _

_ The code_ _._ In the midst of all the crazy she’s dealt with Billy, all the worry she’s felt for the past eighteen or so hours, she’d completely forgotten about the Russians. 

“I can’t come in today. Billy, he’s... he’s hurt, and I-“ 

_ “What?”  _

“And I... I- I need to go now.” She ends the call, putting the phone down and letting herself break down a little. She has to take a couple deep breaths, a couple moments to compose herself, before she can bring herself to move. 

She ends up sitting on the welcome mat, leaning her back against the front door and staring at the closed bathroom door on the other end for the hallway. She can still hear the water rushing from inside. The bill’s going to be through the roof. 

Eventually, she hears the lock click and doesn’t try to stop herself from sobbing.

Her legs fall asleep, feeling cramped from sitting in the same pose for so long, so she stands up, walks around the flat for a while, trying to get the feeling back in them. 

Then she ends up in her bedroom, clutching her pillow to her chest and going through what Billy’d told her, trying to make sense of it. 

Once she feels hungry, she makes herself a sandwich, knocking on the bathroom door to see if Billy wants one. All that answers her is the sound of water. 

At half past six in the evening, Robin’s patience breaks. She gets out a knife from the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, and marshes up to the bathroom door. She sticks the knife into the lock and uses it to turn it, throwing the door open so hard it slams into the wall. 

Billy’s soaked to the bone, shivering in the shower, the sweatpants clinging to his skin, his hair plastered to his forehead in wet ringlets. 

“No, Robin, don’t get any closer!”

“What the fuck are you doing, Billy?!”

“He- He l-likes the cold. It’s the only thing that’s stopping him from making me hurt you.” 

“What- Billy-?”

He gets a panicked look on his face and screws his eyes shut. “Robin, go!”

Breathing harshly, she turns on her heel and rushes off to the phone in the kitchen. Dials the number for her dad’s restaurant. 

“It’s Robin,” she says before they have the time to say anything. “I need to speak to my dad, please, it’s urgent.” 

A couple seconds go by, and then she can hear Pierre’s voice. _“Robbie?”_

“Dad! There’s something wrong with Billy, please, you have to come home, I don’t know what to do-“ 

_ “Robbie, wait, slow down. What’s wrong with Billy?” _

“I don’t know! I don’t know, he’s- He’s-“

_ “Do you need the Chief, too, Robin? He’s here, I think Joyce stood him up, I could ask him to-“ _

“Yes, yes, sure, just get home and hurry!” 

She slams the phone down and turns to go back to Billy. 

But when she gets out to the hallway, the bathroom door is open, and the shower is turned off. And the front door isn’t locked. 

Robin doesn’t bother with shoes, just runs down the stairs and out of the building, just in time to see the Camaro disappear behind the tree line. 

She wants to get on her motorcycle, but she’d left it on the side of the road she’d found Billy on last night. She can’t stay out here.

So she turns back and goes up the stairs again, her legs feeling impossibly heavy, like she’s got weights chained down to them. She collapses in the hallway, burying her face in her hands and sobbing. Again. 

Twenty minutes later, and her dad opens the door, Hopper in tow. Robin’s calmed down by this point, sitting sniffling on the floor. 

“Robin?” Pierre says. 

“He’s gone,” she says. “He ran away while I called you.” 

“What happened here, kid?” Hopper asks. It’s clear from his clothing, a cream coloured suit jacket over a patterned button up, that he’s not supposed to be on duty right now. 

“Last night, Billy, he was supposed to come over, but he was late, and then he called me from a payphone. I took my bike to go look for him, and when I found him, he was hurt and freaking out.” 

Hopper frowns. “Freaking out how? He’d been in an accident?” 

“No. No, he was... He kept saying he didn’t understand, and there was some guy who wanted ‘to build’, whatever that means. And then he said something about a monster-“ 

“A monster?” Pierre asks. “What kind of monster?” 

“I don’t know, I took him home, and he kept talking about  _ ‘him’ _ and ‘the monster’, and when I woke he was sitting in the kitchen and he seemed  _ so lost_.” She looks up and meets Hopper’s gaze. Hopper, who’s staring at her. “His arm was  _ sizzling_,” she whispers. “He’s spent the whole day in the shower; he said he was too cold but he felt like ice when I touched him and the water was fucking freezing. He wouldn’t- He kept pushing me away. Said the cold was the only thing that kept some... some guy from making him hurt me.” 

“ _ What? _ ” Pierre says, right as Hoper drags a hand across his face. 

“Oh Jesus.” 

Robin’s eyes widen. “You know something. You... You do, oh my god.” She pushes herself to standing. 

Hopper’s trying to school his features, but it doesn’t work because Robin saw him.

“You know what’s wrong with him!” she shouts, rushing up to him. “Tell me! He’s my best friend, tell me what’s going on!” 

“Robin!” Pierre shouts and pulls her back, hugging her from behind. 

“No! No, dad, he knows something!”

“I... I’m going to have to check something. You two stay here, okay? And call me if Billy gets back.” 

He closes the door behind him, and Robin turns around, pressing her face against her dad’s chest.

—

“Hi, Ms. Hargrove?” Robin’s in the kitchen, her dad cooking dinner, and she’s calling Billy’s place. Pierre sends her a sympathetic look. 

_“Robin?”_

“Is Billy... Is he there?” 

_ “Oh, no. I thought- I thought he was with you? Wasn’t he supposed to sleep over?” _

“He did, he just... he forgot something here, and I wanted to see if he’d gotten home yet so I could come over and give it back.” 

_ “Sorry, honey, he’s not come home yet. I’ll tell him to give you a call when he does, though.”  _

“Is Max there?” 

_ “Max? She’s sleeping at Jane’s today. Jane Hopper.”  _

Robin sighs.  _Oh for fuck’s sake_. 

“Alright. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Hargrove.” 

_ “Have a good evening, Robin.”  _

Her dad looks up from where he’s washing his hands. “No luck?” 

She sighs again “Nope. He didn’t go home.” 

“Robbie, what’s going on? I’m worried about you. And Billy.” 

She falls down into a kitchen chair. “I don’t know. He kept talking about a monster.” 

“A monster?”

“Yeah, I mean. It sounds insane, doesn’t it?” She laughs, but it’s without humour. “And yet. Dad, he looked so scared. Something, or somebody, hurt him last night, hurt him so bad he couldn’t even tell me.” 

He steps closer to her, and pulls her into a one armed hug. “I’m sorry, Robbie.” 

—

After dinner, her dad takes her with him on his motorcycle to go pick up hers, so she can drive it home. They don’t drive by Brimborn. Robin doesn’t yet know how lucky that is.

—

The next day, Robin gets on her bike and drives to the Hargrove house. 

Susan’s car is already gone, and the Camaro’s not there. She rings the doorbell but no one answers, so Robin ends up on her bike, waiting outside. 

Eventually, Max appears on her skateboard, a curly dark haired girl skipping beside her. 

“Robin?” Max says and gets off the skateboard. “What are you doing here?”

“Have you seen Billy?” 

The girls glance at each other, with matching perplexed expressions. 

“No,” Max says. “Should I have?”

Robin swallows. “He’s missing. And this is going to sound insane, but, he called me two nights ago, he was hurt and freaking out so I took him to my place, and he kept talking about some kind of monster and he stayed in the freezing shower all day yesterday until he ran away and I think the Chief knows something but he’s not telling me anything.”

Their eyes are wide, but Robin notes that they don’t look like they think she’s completely crazy. They look afraid. 

There’s a crackle from somewhere within the the other girl’s backpack. She swings it off her shoulder to rummage around it, taking a walkie talkie out of it, a boy’s voice coming through. 

_ “-ed. El? Do you copy? Code red. It’s an emergency. El, do you copy?” _

“Mike?” 

_ “El! Are you with Max?” _

“Yeah. What do you want?”

_ “You have to get to my house. It’s an-“ _

“An emergency. Okay. Over and out.” 

She puts it back in her backpack and Max turns to Robin. “It’s probably best if you come with.” 

—

“What’s she doing here?” Max’ boyfriend asks after opening the door. 

“Isn’t she Steve’s coworker?” the boy Robin thinks is Mike says. 

“Yeah, I am, and I’m currently worried sick about Billy so you’d better let me in because Max made it sound like you guys knew as much as the Chief does.”

“What does Billy have to-?”

“Let her in, Mike!” El snaps, and with that, Robin’s ushered in with the girls and lead down to the basement. She sees a picture of Nancy and it clicks in her head that she’s at the Wheelers’ place. 

So that’s how Robin ends up on the couch, in between Max and El, and feeling like there’s a conversation she lacks key information in order to be able to understand. 

“So you think the Mindflayer’s back?”

“Yeah, but we don’t know who the new host is-“

“It’s Billy. We think so, at least. Robin came to us for help.”

“Guys, slow down! What the fuck’s going on?” 

And so Robin gets told everything, from the beginning. About what happened to Will Byers when he disappeared, and what happened this past Halloween. 

“So that’s what Billy meant, then? He’s possessed? Why didn’t you tell him before what happened?” This last bit she directs at Max. 

“We thought it was over,” she quietly answers. “That it was gone. El closed the gate, and we burned the tunnels and the others managed to get the Mindflayer out of Will.” 

“So now we need to get it out of Billy.” 

“But how?” Will says. “You guys took me to Hopper’s cabin and-“ 

“The sauna!” Mike exclaims. “He works at the pool, so if we trap him in the sauna, then...” 

“We could burn it out of him,” Robin realises. She’s not certain why she’s going along with all this. Maybe it’s because all of these kids share the same haunted look in their eyes when they talk about it. Or maybe it’s because their friend managed to hear a Russian message. Maybe Robin should tell them about that. 

“But how will we get him there? Robin said he’s been missing all day,” Max says. 

“I’ll find him,” El says. 

She turns to her backpack and brings out a piece of black cloth, sitting down cross legged on the floor while the boys hurry to turn the radio on. White noise. 

“Everybody, quiet,” Mike says and Robin gets the feeling that these two might have something going on.

As they watch, a slow trickle of blood starts from El’s left nostril. If Robin wasn’t seeing this, she wouldn’t have believed it. 

“Found him.”

Max leans forward, hands on her knees. “Where is he?” 

“The pool. He’s... lifeguarding.” 

Lucas scoffs. “Well, that makes it easier.” 

El takes the blindfold off and Will reaches up to turn off the radio. “Let’s go.” 

Mike stands up and turns to Lucas. “No luck with Dustin?” And Robin snaps to them at the sound of the boy’s name. 

“No, he’s still not answering.” 

“I... might know where he is.” 

They both turn to stare at her. “What?” 

“Before this mess with Billy, I was with Steve at Scoops and he and Dustin were trying to decode a Russian transmission he caught through some radio tower he built.” 

“That shit worked?” 

“Oh, so you guys knew about that. Now that I think about it, he did seem kind of bitchy at you lot. I guess he’s still with Steve at the mall.” 

“We have to-“

“Guys!” Max and El are already halfway up the stairs. “Billy first, Russians later!”

—

The kids brought binoculars. 

They’re hiding in the bushes, as though Billy isn’t her best friend and she shouldn’t have to do this. Except, right now, he kind of isn’t. They’re going to fix that. 

“I don’t get it. He’s just sitting there.” 

“He’s not activated,” Will whispers. “When I was the host, I was... dormant, most of the time. You’re only activated when He needs you. He wants to blend in.”

“Well, he’s doing a shot job of it,” Lucas says. “Have you ever seen Billy with that much clothes on?” 

_ It’s true_, Robin thinks, heart welling with emotion. He’s sitting in the shade, but he’s got a tank top on and a towel across his legs and a cap on his head.  _ He must’ve figured it out. He knows it doesn’t like heat, so he’s making it uncomfortable.  _

“We can’t do it right now, though. Too many people,” Lucas says. 

“He closes up on Tuesdays. We’ll do it then.”

The kids nod their assent, and they set out to get everything ready. By the time they’re finished it’s still a couple hours left until the pool closes, and the kids are hungry, so they go away to eat. Robin figures she’s bailed on Steve for two days now, so she gets on her bike and drives to the mall.

“Finally!” Steve says when she steps inside. Then his eyebrows furrow. “Where’s your uniform?”

“At home. I’m not staying long. Dustin in the back?” 

“Yeah, but-“ 

She ignores him and marches right on past. Dustin is indeed there in the back, staring at the code as though eventually something will come to him. 

He looks up when she steps inside. “Where the hell have you been?” 

“With your friends.” 

“What?” 

“Yeah, we-“ A knock on the door interrupts her, and Robin goes to open. Delivery for new ice cream. 

Her eyes land on the name of the delivery company, written on the man’s shirt and cap, with a dawning sense of  _ Oh, my god. Shit. Shit. A silver cat.  _

She signs the form, takes the boxes inside and put them on the table beside Dustin. She snatches the paper with the code from underneath him and turns to go. 

“Hey!” Dustin calls after her. 

“Put those boxes in the freezer!” she answers. 

“I don’t work here!” 

“I don’t care!” she says, door shutting behind her and Steve staring as she runs past him out to the middle of the mall. 

_ Chinese food. Shoe shop. The clock.  _

She’s cracked the code. 

As she comes back inside she’s relieved to find no customers, so she takes a hold of Steve’s shirt and drags him into the back with her. 

“I cracked it.” 

“You what?!” 

“How?!”

She explains it to them, and she stays for an hour more helping Steve out while Dustin babbles about some cute girl he’d met at camp. She laughs out loud at some of the advice Steve gives, and decides to rectify it with her own.

Then it’s time for her to go, and so she leaves them there with the promise to get back that night. 

She meets up with the kids outside the pool and they go through the plan again. By the time the pool’s closed and the sun’s just set, Robin’s feeling a mix of apprehension and excitement.  _ We’re doing it, we’re doing it, we’re getting him back. _

While Billy’s in the shower, they set everything up in the sauna and take their hiding places. 

Robin winches at hearing him shouting, looking for the source of the mocking, getting closer and closer to the sauna.  _ This isn’t the Billy she knows. It isn’t her best friend.  _

Billy steps into the sauna, and El slams the door shut. They rush out and lock the door with the thick chain the boys found, Will immediately turning the dial. 

Billy, or, no, not Billy, not her Billy, but this thing that looks like him, is staring at them through the window. It seems to be zeroing in on her, then Max, then El. 

“Let me out! Let me out! You think this is some sick prank, huh? Is that it?!” It spits, and rattles the door. All of them step back, and Robin sees Lucas push Max back behind him.

But then Billy’s eyes shift, and they go from angry with an underlining panic, and turn into pure desperate fear. He makes eye contact with her, and Robin knows it’s him. She steps closer. 

“Rob,” he gasps. “Hotter.” 

Robin rushes forward and turns the dial even hotter. It’s past the warning sign, past the highest a sauna’s supposed to get. 

“Good.” And he promptly falls backwards and disappears from view. 

“Billy!” Max shouts, pushing past Lucas and running towards the sauna door. Robin grabs her before she can get to close, holding her back with her back pressed against Robin’s chest. 

They can still see him through the window, closer than before. He’s curled up on the floor, arms around his stomach and chest heaving. Sobbing. There’s so much steam inside the room they can barely see him. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I don’t- I don’t understand, I don’t- It’s not me, I promise, it’s not...” 

Max turns around and presses her face against Robin’s chest, a mirroring of what Robin did just last night in her dad’s embrace. 

Robin hates herself for it, but she reaches over and turns the sauna as hot as it can possibly go. 

Billy screams, his back arches, and Robin can’t be certain but she thinks she sees black lines appear on his arms and chest, travelling up underneath his skin. Max tightens her grip around her, and behind them, Robin thinks she hears Will whimper. 

Then there’s a black shadow, black mist, like smoke, filling the entire sauna and obscuring Billy from view. Robin lets out a shout and steps back. 

A minute or so goes by in tense silence, and then it fades away into nothing. Robin lets go off Max and rushes forward. Billy’s on his side inside, retching. 

“Open the door!” she shouts at the others, not letting Billy get out of view. “Guys!”

“How do we know he’s-“ Mike starts to protest. 

“He is. The Mindflayer’s gone,” Will says. 

“Great, now _open the goddamn door!_ ” 

Somewhere along the line, it seems like El got the key to the lock on the chain, because she’s the one who steps forward and unlocks it. While Robin tears the chain away, she turns of the heat in the sauna. 

When Robin wrenches the door open, she’s taken back by the air that flows out. It’s so humid she can barely breathe even with the door open.

She falls to her knees beside Billy, the floor searing. “Billy, hey, hey...” He whimpers when she touches him, his skin clammy, wet like he’s been swimming. With one last great heave, the last of the vomit leaves him, the stench of it thick in the air. 

Robin’s not a fan of looking at vomit, she doesn’t imagine anyone is, but when she sees movement her gaze is immediately drawn to it. 

It’s bubbling, pulling at itself, the consistency akin to slime, and it’s pushing itself away from them, towards the open door. 

She grabs his shoulders and pushes him back against her, away from the moving mess on the floor. 

Following it with her gaze as it passes the threshold, she looks up to see the kids staring transfixed at it. Lucas’ got his arms around Max now. They all follow it as it slides across the floor, off towards the showers and down the drain. 

“Rob,” Billy whimpers, fumbling fingers against her arm trying to catch her attention. The scar on his face stands out like a red line against his pale skin when she turns back to look down at him. “Hurts. Everything’s b-burning.” 

“You’re going to be okay. It’s gone, now. You’re going to be fine.” Turning to the kids, she says, “Call an ambulance.” 

That seems to bring them out of their stupor. “But- We got it out of him, it’s dead-“

“Yeah, but we’ve also just given him heatstroke or heat exhaustion or- or something, I don’t know, just- Just call a fucking ambulance!” When she turns back to look down at him, his eyes are closed. Robin shakes him but he doesn’t react. “Shit! Hurry!” 

She hears one of them run away, hopefully to do as their told, and turns back trying to get a reaction out of Billy. He just lies there, lifeless. Then finally, Robin hears the sound of sirens. 

When the paramedics arrive, they don’t stop to ask any questions, but Robin can see that they want to. Robin stands up and backs away, letting them move Billy onto a stretcher. On the way out, one of them turns back to their little group. 

“Who’s coming with?” 

Robin takes Max’ hand. “We are.” Turning to the rest of them, she adds, “And you lot are going home.” 

Before they can protest, she’s out the door with Max. She stares at Billy the whole way to the hospital, waiting for his eyes to open, but they never do. Max keeps a tight grip on her hand. 

They’re left alone in the waiting room, and when a nurse comes by to ask what happened, Max is the one to speak. It seems like she and her friends devised a plan on what to tell anyone who asked while Robin was busy trying to get Billy to wake up. 

“We wanted to play a prank on my brother, but then the- The dial got stuck and we couldn’t get it to work until Robin came.” The tears probably help in getting the nurse to sympathise, at seeing Max’ remorse. 

She sighs, and walks away. 

A little while later, and Robin looks up to see Susan Hargrove talking to a doctor. Her eyes land on her and Max, who’s leaning against Robin’s shoulder and staring down at her lap. Robin holds up a hand in a weak wave, and Susan gives her a matching weak smile. 

She goes up to them. “Max,” she says, and even in that one word Robin can hear the reprimand. Susan’s must’ve heard the story of what happened from the doctors when they’d called her. 

Max’ head snaps up to look at her mother. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

Susan sighs but holds her hand out so Max can take it, giving it a small squeeze. She falls down into the seat next to her daughter. “I know. I just thought, after everything... I wanted it to be over. I don’t like us, any of us, having to be here again.” Another sigh, and then she turns to look at Robin over Max’ head. “They managed to cool him down, so his temperatures back to normal. He’s sleeping now, and they want to keep him overnight, and for a couple hours tomorrow, at least. For observation. God.” 

“Can we see him?”

Susan grimaces. “They don’t want him disturbed. Your motorcycle’s still at the pool, right? I can drive you there, and you can come over tomorrow? During lunch, or after work?” 

“Okay,” Robin nods. She’d prefer it if she could see him now, see with her own eyes that he’s okay, but she’s not going to fight Susan on the matter. She’s clearly exhausted. 

The Hargrove house is closer to the hospital than the pool, so Susan drops Max off first, then continuing with Robin in the passenger seat beside her. She parks the car, but speaks before Robin can get out. 

“Thank you.” 

Robin turns back to look at her. “For what?” 

Susan chuckles. “Everything? Being there for him. I haven’t been... Well, I haven’t been the best stepmother, and I’m trying, now, but it’s still hard. We have so much to repair. So I’m glad he has you.” She turns to meet Robin’s eyes with her own. “He loves you. Not like... not like  _ that_, I know he’s. Well. I know he doesn’t like girls like that, but he does love you.” 

Robin nods. “I know,” she says. “And I love him just the same.” She sees it in Susan’s eyes that she understands.

—

Robin doesn’t remember that she was supposed to meet Steve and Dustin until the next morning. Susan doesn’t expect her at the hospital until later, so she gets on her bike the next morning and drives to the mall.

“Well, well, well, look who decided to show up,” Steve says, arms crossed, but the image of ‘angry and disappointed mama bear’ is kind of destroyed by what Dustin then says. Because apparently Dustin’s allowed inside the mall before it’s even opened. 

“See! I told you the Russians hadn’t caught her!” 

Robin laughs. “You worried about me, Stevie?” 

He sighs and lets his arms hang back down. “Yeah, actually. Where the hell where you?” 

“Getting the Mindflayer out of Billy with the rest of your children.” 

“What?” Steve says. 

“How do you know about the Mindflayer?!“ Dustin says. 

“Well, Billy apparently got possessed by it, and ran away from me to not hurt me, so I tried to see if Max had seen him and she realised what must’ve happened just as your other friends called them because Will wanted to tell them the Mindflayer was back.” 

“What the fuck? Why-“ 

“Language!” Steve interjects. 

“- didn’t I know about this?”

“Because you’ve been mad at them for days because they didn’t believe you about Suzie and wanted to make out instead of hang out with you so you’ve been ignoring them and they had no clue where you were?” 

“Yeah. Right. That’s... true.” He looks a little shocked that Robin’s actually been paying enough attention to him to notice. 

“Is Billy okay?” Steve asks. 

“He’s at the hospital. We had to burn it out of him by trapping him in the sauna.” 

“Jesus,” he breathes. 

“Yeah. It... It wasn’t pretty.” She has to swallow before speaking again. “But I’m seeing him later today, and I need a distraction. So, did anything interesting happen last night?” 

As they tell her about the hidden room, Robin’s brain is working on high speed trying to figure out how they can get access to it. And then she’s hit with another bright idea, once again leaving the boys behind to wait for her. 

When she returns to Scoops, she’s got blueprints at the ready. 

Everything happens pretty quickly after that. She doesn’t get to go see Billy at the hospital. 

They get Lucas’ little sister to go through the air ducts and open the door to let them inside, and the boxes are filled with containers of some kind of shining green substance. The room turns into an elevator, leading down to a corridor that seems to go on forever. Robin doesn’t know how much time they spend walking. 

Then there’s a Russian man, and Steve’s winning his first fight. And then, Robin gets her first glimpse of what a gate into the Upside Down may look like. 

The Russians, of course, find them, and chase them around until they reach a room with air ducts for the kids to climb through, before the Russians capture them. She’s separated from Steve, and when she next sees him his face is bloody and one of his eyes is swelling shut. They’re thrown to the ground and he’s passed out and she’s panicking and the Russians tie them to chairs and Robin spits one in the face and he calls her a little bitch and  _ fuck him, Robin’s a gigantic bitch_, and then they’re alone. 

Steve eventually wakes up again, and she gets him to try to hop on their chairs to a pair of scissors but they crash to the ground on the third jump and Robin can’t stop laughing. 

Steve’s trying to comfort her, the sweet dingus that he is, and he sounds incredulous when he realises she’s laughing.

“I’m so sorry, it’s just... I can’t believe... My best friend got possessed by a monster from another dimension and now I’m gonna die in a secret Russian base with Steven ‘The Hair’ Harrington. It’s just too trippy, man!” 

Steve’s still trying to comfort her, but Robin can’t really deal with it. So they have a heart to heart, and she tells him about how they used to sit in the same class during his sophomore year, because Robin was so smart she got to skip ahead in that class, and he never noticed her. 

“I guess... I guess us band kids, you know, the geeks, the nerds, the losers, deep down we all just want to be popular too.  _ Accepted_. Even me. And I got a taste of it with Billy, but it’s all... it’s all just  _ bullshit_.” 

Steve laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” 

“We’re not really popular anymore, you know? I don’t know what would have happened next year. But it’s better. Not being popular. We’re not as fake anymore, and we had each other but now I’m probably never going to see him again. Or my dad. But I’m glad you’re here, Stevie.”

Then the Russians are back, and there’s a doctor with them and Steve screams and then he’s coming around to her with a giant syringe and injecting fucking drugs into her veins. 

They’re left alone while the drugs take effect, but they must’ve done something wrong with them, because they’re feeling good.  _ Morons. Fucking morons who screwed up their own drugs!  _

The Russians are back now, and Robin’s mocking them, because they’re idiots who wrote a code a couple kids managed to crack and made a base a couple kids discovered and managed to reach. But then Steve’s being an idiot, and Robin’s trying to get him to shut up halfheartedly, but everything is just so funny and messed up. 

An alarm starts blaring, and the soldiers leave them with the doctor, but the suddenly Dustin’s there with some stick with blue electricity and he’s pushing it at the doctor’s chest and Robin’s petty certain he’s killed him, and Erica’s staring and Dustin frees them and tells them to run and they’re lead to some kind of golf cart and Dustin drives them all the way back to the elevator-room and it’s great.

It’s great, because everything’s shaking as they ascend and Steve’s pretending to surf and it reminds her of Billy and she thinks she should’ve probably have agreed to run away to California with him because then they wouldn’t be dealing with this so she makes Steve falls and that’s pretty funny and now she can’t stop laughing again. 

When they get out, Robin can taste the air. Steve can, too. They should make an ice cream flavour like this, it’s amazing, and she could sell it with Steve and steal a carton to share it with Billy and her dad and everything would be great. 

Dustin and Erica scream at them to run, because apparently there’s more ways to get down to the Russian HQ or maybe there’s more Russians in Hawkins, because they’ve got guns and they’re chasing them now. Again. 

They’re told to sit and watch a movie in the theatre, which is fun, except it’s confusing and Robin’s not really paying attention but she thinks the mum is trying to sleep with her son, except she doesn’t know it’s him, but it reminds her of Billy and all the mums at the pool. Steve’s thirsty, so they leave the cinema to go to the water fountain outside and she tries to explain it to him but he doesn’t get it and talking gets her thirsty so her mouth feels like sandpaper, so she pushes Steve aside. 

The lights are pretty. They’re... _reeeeeaaallllly_ _pretty_. Woah. 

They get nauseous from staring at them, which isn’t really fair, and somehow Robin ends up, drugged off her ass but feeling more like herself after having thrown up, on the dirty bathroom floor with Steve. 

“Do you think Billy would say yes if I asked him out?”

“Yeah, Stevie,” she says. “Yeah. I think he would.”

“I think we’re going to survive.” 

“You know what? I think so, too.” 

But Dustin’s mad at them, and Erica looks like she can’t really believe her eyes, which isn’t very nice, because out of everything she’s seen these last twenty-four hours or so, this should be the least disturbing. 

They end up hiding behind a counter. Everyone has already left, the mall having closed for the day, but they can hear the Russians walking around and talking through coms and shit. Shit shit shit. Maybe they won’t survive after all. Goddamnit.

There’s the sound of a car alarm. Weird, because they’re inside. At least, Robin thinks they are. She feels with her hand and yeah, that’s floor. A glance up and it’s definitely a ceiling above her. Not sky. Okay. 

There’s the sound of something crashing, something big. Together, the four of them look up to see the car which used to stand in the middle of the mall on its side, like it had been slung there by a giant, Russians knocked out around it like bowling pins. 

They rush out from behind the counter and hear the sound of running feet. It’s the whole gang, running down the escalators to meet them. Even Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler are there. Robin’s not really focusing on them though, barely spears them a glance because running behind Max, coming towards her, is Billy. There’s dirt on his face and the bandage on his forehead is halfway to falling off, the paper bracelet they give you at the hospital still around his wrist. But he’s dressed in a crop top and shorts and his eyes are scared and fierce, but most of all, they’re  _ clear_. 

She runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck, burying her face against his hair, and he holds her to him. 

“I was so scared,” she whispers. 

Billy chuckles, the sound loud against her ear. “So was I.” He pulls back a little so he can look at her. “Max told me everything, but we didn’t really get what Russians you guys were-“ he stops himself and Robin sees his eyes shift, looking over her shoulder. “What the hell happened to you, Harrington?” 

“Russians,” she hears Steve say behind her. “Evil Russians. Heard you got possessed?”

“Yep,” Billy says, popping the ‘p’. “That happened.” 

They’re all talking at once, so loud Robin almost misses it when El walks away and falls to the floor. 

“Hey, guys...” She says, and Mike’s head snap up to follow her gaze. 

“ _ El! _ ” 

They all rush over, crashing down around her. She’s clutching at her leg, and it seems like there’s something stuck underneath her skin, growing and pulsating. There’s a round, bleeding wound, the skin around it red and infected. 

“Shit,” Billy says, and a second later Jonathan is running away, only to come back with a packet of plastic gloves, a knife, and a wooden spoon.

“This is going to hurt like hell,” he warns her, and hands the spoon to Mike, who’s taken a seat beside her, El leaning back into his arms. “She might want to bite down on this.”

El puts it in between her teeth and nods. 

“Do it,” Mike says, and Jonathan puts on a glove and lowers the knife towards the middle of the wound. It’s trembling in his grip. 

He lowers it down and Robin feels ready to vomit as El starts screaming once it touches her skin. Lucas’s little sister does, and Robin gets Max pushed towards her as he reaches for his sister. Max grabs Robin’s hand, her grip sweaty and warm. 

Jonathan throws the knife to the side and, without looking, tries to pry the skin he’s cut apart to fish out whatever’s inside her leg. Robin flinches as Billy suddenly moves, pushing Jonathan away to the side. 

“You can’t do it if you’re not looking!” he snaps, and pulls gloves on both of his hands. He looks up at Will and Mike, on each side of her. “Hold her down. Steve. Her leg.” 

Steve scrambles forward, Dustin moving from his side to where Nancy’s holding Jonathan. “Okay. Okay. El? You’re gonna be okay.”

She’s still crying, still screaming, but Steve keeps her leg from kicking out and obscures her vision from what’s going on. Doesn’t let her see as Billy swallows and pushes his hand into her wound, his jaw clenching, before he’s pulling some kind of growth, similar to the one he’d thrown up yesterday, out of her leg and to the side. El lets out one final scream and collapses back against Mike, sobbing. 

Robin turns around with Billy to watch as the growth drags itself away, keeping her gaze trained on the floor. A big booth comes into view and crushes it underneath its sole, and Robin follows it to find Hopper, Ms. Byers, and two unknown men, one with his arm slung over the other’s shoulder, staring at them. 

“El?!” Hopper shouts, running forward and scoping her up in his arms, Ms. Byers at his heels to hug Will. Hopper turns to face them all. “What the hell’s happened?”he bellows. 

“You’re one to talk!” Lucas shouts. “We tried to get your help but where the fuck where you?! Not here!” 

“They were kidnapping a Russian scientist and taking him to me because I’m the only one any of you know who can speak Russian,” the wild haired man carrying the passed out one says. He holds up his hand in a small wave, grinning down at them. “Hi, Murray, for those of you who don’t know.” Then his tone shifts again, to something accusing this time. “But now Alexei here is probably  _ dying_, because someone didn’t give him enough protection despite him betraying his land and country to help us!” 

Hopper scoffs. “Smirnoff’s not dying.” 

“He got shot!” 

“In the arm. It’s barely a scratch! It just nicked him a little, that’s all.”

“He passed out,” Murray protests and shakes his charge a little. For emphasis.

“Yeah, because he obviously doesn’t like blood. Calm down.” He points at Billy. “You. You’re no longer possessed.” 

Billy throws him a disbelieving look. “Obviously.” 

“Great, so you fixed that. What happened next?” 

Immediately, everyone starts talking. 

“ _One at a time!_ ” 

It takes a couple minutes, but eventually, it seems like everyone’s caught up. Robin’s thoughts are a whirlwind in her head. She’s so tired. 

Turns out Hopper knows how to turn of the machine trying to open the Gate. Because they kidnapped the man who built it. Who’s Russian, but who’s also apparently nice. And who Robin thinks Murray’s got a crush on.

Dustin argues they’re going to need him and Erica to give them directions, and so they get divided into groups. Robin grabs Billy and Steve by the arms before anyone can say anything else, and they end up in charge of getting Dustin to his radio tower, because apparently that will help in getting some number that they need. Robin’s not sure, she’s still a little high and her brain’s still a little sluggish. She thinks she sees Murray disappear with the Russian scientist into some clothing shop. The dude’s still out cold. 

Anyway, they end up bursting through the doors of the wall, Steve exclaiming in joy at the sight of the car there. 

“The ‘Toddfather’?” Robin reads of the registration plate. 

“Steve’s her daddy now!” 

“Jesus,” Billy laughs and Robin stares at Steve in distaste. 

“Did you just speak to yourself in the third person?” 

“And did he just call himself the car’s ‘daddy’?” Erica asks. 

Robin doesn’t bother answering, just going over to climb into the backseat with Dustin, Erica soon following. 

Steve jumps into the driver’s seat but a second later Billy’s wrenching the door open. 

“Scoot over.” 

“What? No. Why do you get to drive?” 

“Because you’re still  _ high_. And I didn’t survive getting possessed and you lot didn’t survive Russians just for you to go and kill us all. Move.” 

He sounds like a petulant child, but at least he does it. Robin’s kind of relieved. Billy’s a speed demon but at least she trusts his driving skills. And if Steve’s feeling the same she is then she’d rather wait until they’ve both slept for a day or so before getting in a car with him driving.

“Where are we going?” Billy asks, once he’s taken his seat and is pulling away from the car park outside the mall. 

“Weathertop!” Dustin answers. 

“The fuck is that?” 

“Just drive, I’ll tell you when to turn!” 

The Toddfather, it turns out, doesn’t manage to get all the way up the grassy hill, so they have to run the rest of the way up to Dustin’s radio tower. Robin comes to a stop as she lays eyes on it. She doesn’t know if it would be more correct to call these kids insane or little geniuses. 

Dustin radios Murray first, calling him Bald Eagle. They’re Scoops Troop, it turns out. Robin likes it. Murray doesn’t. 

It’s silent for a whole minute or so once Murray’s gone, then another crackle comes through. Robin strains her ears to hear, but there are no words, just a continuous crackle. And then, a shriek. 

“The Mindflayer,” Billy says, staring down at the mall in the distance. They can see the lights flickering. 

“Shit!” Steve says, and then he’s turning around and running back to the car. “We have to help them!” 

Robin stares after him for a second before starting to run, Billy hot on her heels. 

“Wait!” Dustin shouts, and Robin glances over her shoulder to see him throw Billy a walkie. “Communication!” 

Billy, athletic and quick after having trained basketball, quickly gains on her and ends up running alongside her, staring at Steve up ahead of them. 

“Is he always like this?” Billy shouts at her as they’re running after him. Robin’s trying to keep herself from tripping and rolling the whole way down the goddamn hill. 

“Yeah!” she shouts back, and Billy’s lips open up in a wide grin. 

Steve’s in the backseat when they arrive at the car, and Robin can’t help but smile as she gets in on the passenger side, Billy jumping into the driver’s seat.  _ Steve’d trusted that they’d come after him.  _

“I don’t get how this is real life,” Billy says, grabbing the wheel and trying to drive backwards down the rest of the hill. 

“Yeah, welcome to the club,” Steve says. “It’s a shitty, shitty club to be in, but at least we love each other.” 

When they get back to Starcourt it’s just in time to see the monster, the fucking Mindflayer, climbing around on the roof like an enormous spider or crab.

They stare up at for a couple seconds, before another car suddenly comes screeching to a stop behind them. Robin turns around to see Nancy sticking her head out through the window. 

“Get in!” she shouts and they scramble out of the car, into the trunk of the other one, legs getting tangled together as they rush to close the lid. 

The Mindflayer follows after them, and Robin’s starting to rethink how smart it was to get into Jonathan’s car. Will and Lucas are in the backseat, and there’s no sign of Max or El or Mike, but Robin doubts this is the time for questions. Distantly, she wonders what the goal here is. Lure it all the way back to central Hawkins? Make it fall down into the Quarry?  What?

Dustin’s voice comes from the walkie, and he’s singing. Robin can’t help but wonder if it’s another after effect of the drugs, but looking up she finds both Steve and Billy staring at the walkie with matching expressions of bewilderment. Not just her, then. Good. 

A girl joins in, and Steve meets her gaze. “Suzie,” they say. 

“It’s turning back!” someone shouts, and Robin turns her head to the side to see the Mindflayer turning back.

“You think we tired it out?” 

“No way.” 

Jonathan swerves to the side and turns the car around, heading back towards the mall. 

Once they get back, they can hear the Mindflayer roaring from inside. Lucas and Will get out boxes of fireworks and hand her and Steve one each, doing the same for Nancy and Jonathan and grabbing the last two for themselves. 

They sneak inside, trying to be as quiet as possible as they rush up the stairs to the second floor, hurrying towards the heart of the mall. 

Neither Mike nor Max are anywhere in sight, but past the Mindflayer, standing in the middle underneath the broken ceiling and swinging his tentacle-arms around, Robin can just make out El trying to limp away. 

She lights a firework and throws it straight at the monster, the others quickly following suit. It screams and flails around, but they just keep it coming. 

Robin reaches back behind her to grab another firework, but comes up short. She turns around to find the box empty, and looks around her. Steve’s got two, one in each hand and about to throw one of them, and Billy...

Billy’s not there. 

He was there a second ago, but he’s not anymore, and Robin runs forward to lean over the railing, seeing El collapsed on the floor with the Mindflayer steadily advancing towards her. 

And then Billy’s there, almost a blur from how quickly he runs, grabbing hold of her arms and pulling her back just as one of the Mindflayer’s tentacles buries itself in the floor where she just was. Robin heart is beating so hard it feels like it’ll beat straight out of her chest as she watches it unfold. 

Billy leans down and takes El into his arms, carrying her bridal style as he starts running. 

The Mindflayer sways then, once, twice, and Robin realises that Hopper and Ms. Byers and Murray must have succeeded, because it lets out one final shriek and falls. 

But on its way down to the ground, one of its legs or arms or tentacles or whatever, shoots out and crashes into Billy, bringing him and El down with it. 

Robin lets out a cry and turns to run down the stairs. She skids to a halt next to the Mindflayer. Billy’s on his side, El still pressed to his chest, and one of the Mindflayer’s appendages over them. At least it doesn’t seem to have pierced any of them, no growing pool of blood on the floor. 

It’s the first time she’s seen it up close, without it moving about, and she can’t really bring herself to stop staring. It looks like it’s made up of flesh. Like the inside of a person, exploded and turned into...  _ this_. A monster. People she’s probably seen around, who’ve dined at her dad’s restaurant.

Max and Mike come running up on either side of her, stopping next to her. She hears Mike take in a deep breath, and then he’s running forward and trying to pull the Mindflayer off of them. 

But it must be heavy, or slippery, because he can’t seem to get a grip. Robin steels herself before going up beside him to help.

It’s gorey. And as soon as she touches it, her fingers seem to sink into it. It stinks. Dear lord, how it stinks. 

“Robin?” She turns around to find Steve. Steve glances down at Billy and El on the floor, at her and Mike, elbow deep in gooey Mindflayer. “Drag them out instead?” 

Robin pulls back, Mike doing the same a second later. “Okay. Yeah. Help me?”

Steve nods, and goes to stand by Billy’s legs with Max, Robin and Mike moving to his and El’s head. Robin takes Billy’s shoulders and pulls, Mike standing by to keep them from hurting themselves, while Max and Steve push on his legs. 

Neither one wakes up while they do it, and worry churns in her gut. Once they’re out from underneath the Mindflayer, Mike sits down and pulls El into his arms, stroking her hair. Robin pulls Billy’s head down to rest in her lap. Steve and Max come around to her, Max glancing worriedly at El before sitting down by Billy, shaking his shoulder. 

“Why won’t he wake up?” she asks, looking ready to cry. 

“He must’ve hit his head, falling down,” Steve says, frowning down at Billy’s still face. 

Robin reaches out and pulls Max to her. “He’s okay,” she says. “He’s breathing.”

She hears running steps, and assumes it’s the others, running down to meet them, but then rounding the corner comes people dressed in black military grade gear, firearms raised. 

“No more Russians, please,” Steve sighs, resigned. 

But then a man with greying hair comes out, eyes landing on the dead Mindflayer and calls out for Hopper. As if on cue, Hopper emerges from the other end of the mall, Joyce and Murray in tow. 

“Owens!” he answers. 

They haven’t noticed them yet, Robin realises, partly obscured from view as they are by sitting on the ground behind a couple planters. 

“Will? Jonathan!” Ms. Byers calls, and Robin hears running feet, sees Will come down the escalators to hug his mum. 

“El?!” Hopper shouts, and when she doesn’t answer his tone changes to panicked. “ _ El?! _ ” 

“We’re here!” Max calls. 

Hopper comes running, eyes widening at the sight of them. “What happened?” He falls down beside Mike, leaning over to look at her. “Is she-?” 

“They’re still alive. El passed out and Billy saved her, but the Mindflayer knocked them down when he died,” Steve says.

Hopper sighs. Owens has come up to them now, too, his men having lowered their guns. “The gate’s closed, we managed to turn of the machine. Think you can help get them to a hospital, doc? We’ve got a Russian who helped us; we wouldn’t have been able to stop the others without him. He got shot in the arm earlier. Murray’s hid him somewhere.” 

“I think we can get that arranged,” Dr. Owens says. “Anyone else hurt?” 

“Steve and Robin got drugged by the Russians,” Dustin says, suddenly appearing behind the man. 

He nods, and motions for one of the men to get closer. Robin tunes out everything by that point, exhausted and worn out, her only focus her arm around Max, Steve’s hand in hers, and Billy’s head in her lap. 

—

“I’m really tired of seeing you here, honey.”

Robin looks up. She’s sitting on the floor of a corridor in the hospital, having just had her blood drawn and waiting for Steve who went to the bathroom, and the nurse from that night Neil scarred Billy’s face is standing in front of her. 

“Yeah,” Robin chuckles. “I’m tired of being here.” 

She hands her a chocolate bar and Robin takes it, smiling her thanks. She hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast the day they got down to the lab. The nurse gives her a gentle smile and continues on her way. Robin breaks the bar in two, and when Steve comes back she hands him the one end. 

“How do you deal with it?” she asks. 

“Deal with what?” 

“This. Everything. The Upside Down.” 

Steve sighs. “I mean, you... Well, I suppose you talk about it, you know. Because you’re not alone in this, you’ve got a group of people who went through the same type of shit. And then you hope and wait for it to get better.”

“And does it? Get better?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Slowly, sometimes. And you might still have nightmares at times, but... yeah. It gets better.” 

“Okay.” 

— 

Susan’s crying. Robin saw her, a little while ago, hugging Max and crying. But Billy’s okay, Robin knows he is, because she’s seen him, a fresh bandage on his forehead, sleeping. 

—

She’d fallen asleep in Billy’s room. It’s next to both Alexei’s and El’s, and it’s got a couch and a couple chairs. Steve’s asleep on the couch, but Robin had just climbed up on the bed next to him and gone to sleep after Susan went home with Max. Susan, who’d spent half an hour just looking worriedly at him and stroking his hair. 

Robin’s woken up by the sound of the door opening, her dad stepping through followed by Hopper. She pushes herself up, swinging her legs over the edge of Billy’s bed so she’s sitting, facing her dad as he comes to stand in front of her. He gives her a quick hug, Robin breathing in the comforting scent of spices that always clings to him, before he steps back, taking her hands. 

“Robin. What the hell is going on?”

She’s been fed some bullshit story, not that she can really remember it. And it’s not like her dad would buy it, not after having Billy spending a whole day in their shower and hearing Robin say he told her a monster got him. And she wants to tell him, god, how she wants to tell him. For the first time since the Russians, Robin starts crying. “I can’t- I can’t tell you, dad, I’m not- I’m not  _ allowed_.”

“What ever do you mean? Robbie?” he says kindly, searchingly. 

“It’s too dangerous,” she whispers. 

“Robbie. If something’s too dangerous for me to know, then it definitely is too dangerous for you to have gone through.” He turns to look at Hopper. “Jim. She was right, you know what happened here. Please.”

Hopper sighs. “You’re going to want to sit down for this one, Pierre.” 

—

A month later, Steve and Robin have gotten jobs at Family Video, starting in late August, and Keith’s going to be their boss, which is weird, to not say the least. A month later, Steve’s become a regular during Billy and Robin’s hangouts, although he’s not there every time, and Robin knows there are times when he and Billy hang out alone, usually in Steve’s bed, because Billy always comes back from a date with a special kind of smile on his face. She figures Steve’s busy confiding in Dustin, and laughs a little at the mental image. 

A month later, and dinners at Steve’s place, the whole party there with Joyce fussing over everyone and Murray sneaking in vodka, and Robin trying to learn more Russian from Alexei, her dad coming early to help cook, and the kids jumping in the pool in Steve’s backyard, while Billy acts as a lifeguard and Steve acts as a mother hen, replacing bad memories with good ones, have become a weekly thing. Thursday nights are family nights, because that’s what they all are now. 

A month later, and Robin sees the ocean for the first time. She’s in California. It had taken her dad some convincing, but he’d eventually relented when he’d found out Susan was coming with them. Right now, Susan’s on the beach with Max, and Steve and Billy are splashing each other in the waves of the sea. Robin had been surprised by the way the salt clung to her skin when she first exited the water. But now, the sun’s about to set, and she grabs her camera and directs it out at sea, snapping picture after picture. The boys, her best friends, appear as silhouettes against the backdrop of the purple and pink sky. And Robin’s happy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked it! Please leave kudos if you did or a comment if you want! 
> 
> Also, can anyone make sense of the timeline in S3? I mean, I’ve written it down in order to rewrite around three times now, but I still don’t get how long Scoops Troop spent in the Russian lab. A couple hours? A whole day? According to the timeline on the Strangers Thing wiki they went down on the 2nd and didn’t get up until the 4th, and I know Erica and Dustin slept through the night or something, but I mean... How long is that corridor supposed to be? It doesn’t take Hopper & Co that long to get to the gate, close it, and get back? And did Erica and Dustin just chill, perhaps taking a nap, in the air ducts? What the fuck?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please leave kudos or a comment to tell me what you thought! Seeing a new comment in my inbox always leaves me happy for the rest of the day!


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